BATAL: The balloon measurement campaigns of the Asian tropopause aerosol layer

J. P. Vernier*, T. D. Fairlie, T. Deshler, M. Venkat Ratnam, H. Gadhavi, B. S. Kumar, M. Natarajan, A. K. Pandit, S. T. Akhil Raj, A. Hemanth Kumar, A. Jayaraman, A. K. Singh, N. Rastogi, P. R. Sinha, S. Kumar, S. Tiwari, T. Wegner, N. Baker, D. Vignelles, G. StenchikovI. Shevchenko, J. Smith, K. Bedka, A. Kesarkar, V. Singh, J. Bhate, V. Ravikiran, M. Durga Rao, S. Ravindrababu, A. Patel, H. Vernier, F. G. Wienhold, H. Liu, T. N. Knepp, L. Thomason, J. Crawford, L. Ziemba, J. Moore, S. Crumeyrolle, M. Williamson, G. Berthet, F. Jégou, J. B. Renard

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

81 Scopus citations

Abstract

A series of NASA-ISRO-sponsored balloon campaigns in India and Saudi Arabia, called the Asian tropopause aerosol layer (ATAL) was conducted between 2014 and 2017 to study the nature, formation, and transport of polluted aerosols in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere during the Asian summer monsoon (ASM). The ATAL was confirmed through solar occultation observations by Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) II after improving the cloud-aerosol separation approach using the ratio between aerosol extinction coefficients retrieved at two wavelengths. Analysis of long-term satellite measurements of upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) aero­sols suggested that ATAL's aerosol optical depth had increased by 2-3 times since the late 1990s, pointing out its possible connection with Asian pollution growth.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)955-973
Number of pages19
JournalBulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Volume99
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2018

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Atmospheric Science

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