Detecting Precipitation and Aerosol Removal from the African Boundary
Layer during ORACLES using Water Vapor Heavy Isotope Ratios
Abstract
The NASA ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS
(ORACLES) project provides an extensive data set of aircraft in-situ
meteorological, aerosol, and total water heavy isotope ratio
measurements in the southeast Atlantic (SEA) lower troposphere over the
months of Sept. 2016, Aug. 2017, and Oct. 2018. These months are during
southern hemisphere spring, which is the agricultural burning season in
subtropical southern Africa. During this season, biomass burning aerosol
(BBA) loaded air in the African planetary boundary layer is carried out
over the SEA by lower troposphere easterly flow. The goal of ORACLES was
to study the effects of aerosol loading in the lower troposphere and as
they mix into the semi-permanent cloud deck over the SEA. During
ORACLES, water isotope ratio measurements D/H and 18O/16O were taken
using Picarro brand cavity ring-down spectroscopic analyzers integrated
into our Water Isotope System for Precipitation and Entrainment Research
(WISPER). With over 300 hrs (~140,000 linear km at the
typical aircraft speed) of 1 Hz sampling between 22°S to the equator and
from 70 m to 6 km, this is a large and vertically resolved isotope
dataset. In this presentation, we first use the coupled measurements of
total water concentration and its heavy isotope ratio D/H to distinguish
BBA plumes which have experienced prior precipitation vs those which
have not. The findings are supported with lagrangian back-trajectories,
MERRA surface temperatures and moisture, and isoCAM surface isotope
values, which are combined to constrain simple isotope models. We find
that BBA air sampled in 2016 experienced almost no precipitation, while
BBA air and moisture in 2017 follow a model of convective outflow and
most of the moisture loss is due to precipitation. Finally, we show the
strong agreement between D/H evidence of precipitation amount and an
indicator of aerosol removal via precipitation: the ratio of black
carbon to carbon monoxide. In contrast, no correlation between total
water concentration and aerosol removal is found, demonstrating the
additional information contained in the isotope ratio measurements. This
also provides an example of isotope ratio measurements supplementing
other variables during a multifaceted field project to address science
questions.