Abstract
Supercooled fogs can have an important radiative impact at the surface
of the Greenland Ice Sheet, but they are difficult to detect and our
understanding of the factors that control their lifetime and radiative
properties is limited by a lack of observations. This study demonstrates
that spectrally resolved measurements of downwelling longwave radiation
can be used to generate retrievals of fog microphysical properties
(phase and particle effective radius) when the fog visible optical depth
is greater than ~0.25. For twelve cases of fog under
otherwise clear skies between June and September 2019 at Summit Station
in central Greenland, nine cases were mixed-phase. The mean ice particle
(optically-equivalent sphere) effective radius was 24.0±7.8 µm, and the
mean liquid droplet effective radius was 14.0±2.7 µm. These results,
combined with measurements of aerosol particle number concentrations,
provide observational evidence supporting the hypotheses that (a) low
surface aerosol particle number concentrations can limit fog liquid
water path, (b) fog can act to increase near-surface aerosol particle
number concentrations through enhanced mixing, and (c) multiple fog
events in quiescent periods gradually deplete near-surface aerosol
particle number concentrations.