Lidar profiling of aerosol optical properties from Paris to Lake Baikal (Siberia)
Abstract. In June 2013, a ground-based mobile lidar performed the 10 000 km ride from Paris to Ulan-Ude, near Lake Baikal, profiling for the first time aerosol optical properties all the way from Western Europe to central Siberia. The instrument was equipped with N2-Raman and depolarization channels that enabled an optical speciation of aerosols in the low and middle troposphere. The backscatter-to-extinction ratio (BER) and particle depolarization ratio (PDR) at 355 nm have been retrieved. The BER in the lower boundary layer (300–700 m) was found to be 0.017 ± 0.009 sr−1 in average during the campaign, with slightly higher values in background conditions near Lake Baikal (0.021 ± 0.010 sr−1 in average) corresponding to dust-like particles. PDR values observed in Russian cities (>1.7%) are higher than the ones measured in European cities (<1.3%) due to the lifting of terrigenous aerosols by traffic on roads with a bad tarmac. Biomass burning layers from grassland or/and forest fires in southern Russia exhibit BER values ranging from 0.010 to 0.015 sr−1 and from 2 to 3% for the PDR. Desert dust aerosols originating from the Caspian and Aral seas regions were characterized for the first time, with a BER (PDR) of 0.022 sr−1 (21%) for pure dust, and 0.011 sr−1 (15%) for a mix between dust and biomass burning. The lidar observations also showed that this dust event extended over 2300 km and lasted for ~6 days. Measurements from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) show that our results are comparable in terms of aerosol optical thickness (between 0.05 and 0.40 at 355 nm) with the mean aerosol load encountered throughout our route.