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ACT TRACER Dust Exploration

TRACER Campaign

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility (ARM)

TRacking Aerosol Convection interations ExpeRiment (TRACER)

July 16-19, 2022 Dust Event

Notebook for data exploration of ARM aerosol and lidar data.
Corresponding Author: Adam Theisen (atheisen@anl.gov)

Overview

The first notebook in this series was an introduction to some of the features in ACT. In this notebook, we will be exploring different types of data and bringing it all together to get a view of this dust event.

  1. Micropulse Lidar (MPL) Data

  2. Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS) Data

  3. Putting it All Together

  4. Questions for the User to Explore

Prerequisites

This notebook will rely heavily on Python and the Atmospheric data Community Toolkit (ACT). Don’t worry if you don’t have experience with either, this notebook will walk you though what you need to know.

You will also need an account and token to download data using the ARM Live webservice. Navigate to the webservice information page and log in to get your token. Your account username will be your ARM username.

ConceptsImportanceNotes
ACTHelpful
3-ACT-Basics.ipynbHelpful
  • Time to learn: 60 Minutes

  • System requirements:

    • Python 3.11 or latest

    • ACT v2.0.0 or latest

    • numpy

    • xarray

    • matplotlib


Imports

Let’s get started with some data! But first, we need to import some libraries.

Micropulse Lidar (MPL) Data

ARM has many value-added products (VAPs) that apply corrections, additional quality control, retrievals, and more. These are a great way to get the data if you don’t want to do the added processing yourself. In this case, there is a VAP for the MPL with the datastream hou30smplcmask1zwangM1.c1 that you could utilize. For this case though, let’s download the instrument data and correct it ourselves using ACT.

Polarized Lidar

The micropulse lidar is a polarized lidar which means that it can be used to inform us about the shape of the particles that the light is interacting with. This website from the Leibniz Institute for Troposheric Research has a nice explanation of polarized lidar.

Aerosol Particle Size Data

Dust particles are generally under 10 µm or 10,000 nm and ARM has a variety of instruments that measure across different ranges. The chart below shows the ranges for each instrument and where we can expect to see the dust particles.

Putting it All Together

Let’s start pulling these data together into the same plots so we can see what’s going on.

Check this out

Floutsi et al 2023 has a great paper that shows how different aerosols can have different ratios. In Figure 3, you can see that Sharan dust has a slightly different signal than Central Asian dust.

Try more data!

Go back and adjust the start/end date around this period and see how things change! You can also try adding in some of the other instruments like the OPC (houaosopcM1.b1: calc_dust_weight or total_N_conc) or the NEPHDRY (houaosnephdry1mM1.b1: Bs_B_Dry_Neph3W). You can find a full list of data products on the ARM TRACER website

Advanced Visualizations and Processing

Let’s try and dive into the data a little more and see if there are any patterns in the data based on the direction of the wind.

Data Roses

Checkout the area

The AMF was deployed at La Porte Municipal Airport. Check out the google map and see if this mapes sense!

Now back to the dust event!

Let’s see if we can look at the lowest layers in the MPL data and see how they compare to the APS data. For this, we can use simple matplotlib plots to investigate as well.


Excercises

Here are a couple additional excercises that users can work through on their own time.

Time series of ratios of fine particles vs. coarse particles using SMPS and APS data

Using the SMPS (ds_smps) and APS (ds_aps) data, can you calculate a ratio of fine to coarse particles? Remember, that this data would need to be on the same timestep.

Compare Chemical Composition Between Events

Create a pie chart of aerosol composition on July 12, 13, and compare it to that from 17-18. This will require subsetting the ds_acsm data.

Studies have shown that Dust events can contribute to sulfate formation through the interaction of mineral dust particles with sulfur dioxide (SO2) and other atmospheric gases.

Chemical Composition Distribution

The PI charts can provide some information on the distribution but we can get more information by looking at the distribution using violin plots. Does the dust event still show high sulfates in this view?

Doppler Lidar

Out of interest, let us take a look at the doppler lidar data.

We can used both the fixed pointing mode (FPT) and plan position indicator (PPI) mode datasets to plot signal to noise ration with an overlay of wind barbs.

What’s Happening Here?

Take a look at the DQ Office Plots of surface meteorological variables for the day. In particular, check out the wind direction and see if that matches up with what you’re seeing in the lowest level of the plots.


Additional Questions for the User to Explore

  1. Can you improve these matplotlib plots to make them more readable?

  2. Are there other variables that you would be interested in for the data roses?

  3. We looked at relationships between the MPL and APS, are there other sets of instruments that might have relationships? (SP2 and PSAP?)

More Advanced
  1. Can we use a machine learning toolkit like scikit-learn to cluster the MPL/APS data?

  2. Could we get relationships between those clusters or a classification of what it is (smoke, dust, pollution)?


Next Steps

This notebook showed users how they can explore multiple different datasets using ACT. The next steps are for the users to continue exploring and diving into the data and the questions posed at the end!

Data Used in this Notebook

Ermold, B., & Flynn, C. Particle Soot Absorption Photometer (AOSPSAP3W1M). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Sedlacek et al. (2011)

Jackson, R., & Sedlacek, A. Single Particle Soot Photometer (AOSSP2BC60S). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Jackson et al. (2021)

Kuang, C., & Singh, A. Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (AOSAPS). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Singh et al. (2021)

Kyrouac, J., & Shi, Y. Surface Meteorological Instrumentation (MET). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Kyrouac et al. (2021)

Muradyan, P., Cromwell, E., Koontz, A., & Coulter, R. Micropulse Lidar (MPLPOLFS). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Muradyan et al. (2010)

Newsom, R., Shi, Y., & Krishnamurthy, R. Doppler Lidar (DLFPT). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Newsom et al. (2010)

Newsom, R., Shi, Y., & Krishnamurthy, R. Doppler Lidar (DLPPI). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Newsom et al. (2010)

Sivaraman, C., Flynn, D., Riihimaki, L., & Comstock, J. Cloud mask from Micropulse Lidar (30SMPLCMASK1ZWANG). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Sivaraman et al. (2019)

Zawadowicz, M., & Howie, J. Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (AOSACSM). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Zawadowicz et al. (2021)

References
  1. Sedlacek, A., Smith, S., Ermold, B., Flynn, C., Trojanowski, R., Andrews, E., Hayes, C., Salwen, C., & Flynn, C. (2011). aospsap3w1m.b1. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility. 10.5439/1225037
  2. Jackson, R., Sedlacek, A., Salwen, C., & Hayes, C. (2021). Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) Black Carbon mass and number concentrations. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1807910
  3. Singh, A., Oliveira, D. C. D., Koontz, A., Sedlacek, A., & Kuang, C. (2021). aosaps.b1. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1407135
  4. Kyrouac, J., Shi, Y., & Tuftedal, M. (2021). met.b1. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1786358
  5. Muradyan, P., Cromwell, E., Koontz, A., Coulter, R., Flynn, C., Ermold, B., & OBrien, J. (2010). mplpolfs.b1. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1320657
  6. Newsom, R., Shi, Y., & Krishnamurthy, R. (2010). dlfpt. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1025185
  7. Newsom, R., Shi, Y., & Krishnamurthy, R. (2010). dlppi. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1025186
  8. Sivaraman, C., Flynn, D., Riihimaki, L., Comstock, J., & Zhang, D. (2019). Cloud Mask from Micropulse Lidar. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1508389
  9. Zawadowicz, M., Howie, J., Hayes, C., Allain, M., Salwen, C., & Behrens, B. (2021). Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor, mentor processed, b2. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); ARM Data Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). 10.5439/1762267