Airborne measurements of the spectral surface albedo over Morocco and its influence on the radiative forcing of Saharan dust

This PhD thesis is embedded into the DFG research project SAMUM, the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment which was initiated with the goal to investigate the optical and microphysical properties of Saharan dust aerosol, its transport, and its radiative effect. This work described the deployment of the Spectral Modular Airborne Radiation Measurement SysTem (SMART-Albedometer) in SAMUM after it has been extended in its spectral range. The SAMUM field campaign was conducted in May and June 2006 in south-eastern Morocco. At two ground stations and aboard two aircraft various measurements in an almost pure plume of Saharan dust were conducted. Airborne measurements of the spectral upwelling and downwelling irradiance are used to derive the spectral surface albedo in its typical range in the experiment region. Typical spectral types are presented and compared to the surface albedo derived from MISR satellite data. Furthermore, the radiative forcing of the observed Saharan dust is estimated in dependence on the surface albedo and its regional variations. A strong dependence of the radiative forcing not only on the surface albedo, but also on the optical properties of the dust aerosol is observed. It is unique to SAMUM that all these influential parameters have been measured in near-source Saharan dust, which made the calculations shown in this work possible.

The impact of ice crystals on radiative forcing and remote sensing of arctic boundary-layer mixed-phase clouds

This PhD thesis is embedded into the Arctic Study of Tropospheric Aerosol, Clouds and Radiation (ASTAR) and investigates the radiative transfer through Arctic boundary-layer mixed-phase (ABM) clouds. For this purpose airborne spectral solar radiation measurements and simulations of the solar and thermal infrared radiative transfer have been performed. This work reports on measurements with the Spectral Modular Airborne Radiation measurement sysTem (SMART-Albedometer) conducted in the framework of ASTAR in April 2007 close to Svalbard. For ASTAR the SMART-Albedometer was extended to measure spectral radiance. The development and calibration of the radiance measurements are described in this work. In combination with in situ measurements of cloud particle properties provided by the Laboratoire de M¶et¶eorologie Physique (LaMP) and simultaneous airborne lidar measurements by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) ABM clouds were sampled. The SMART-Albedometer measurements were used to retrieve the cloud thermodynamic phase by three different approaches. A comparison of these results with the in situ and lidar measurements is presented in two case studies. Beside the dominating mixed-phase clouds pure ice clouds were found in cloud gaps and at the edge of a large cloud field. Furthermore the vertical distribution of ice crystals within ABM clouds was investigated. It was found that ice crystals at cloud top are necessary to describe the observed SMART-Albedometer measurements. The impact of ice crystals on the radiative forcing of ABM clouds is in vestigated by extensive radiative transfer simulations. The solar and net radiative forcing was found to depend on the ice crystal size, shape and the mixing ratio of ice crystals and liquid water droplets.

Influence of ice crystal habit and cirrus spatial inhomogeneities on the retrieval of cirrus optical thickness and effective radius

Diese Dissertation untersucht den Einfluss von Eiskristallform und räumlicher Inhomogenität von Zirren auf das Retrieval von optischer Wolkendicke und effektivem Eispartikelradius. Zu diesem Zweck werden flugzeuggetragene spektrale Messungen solarer Strahlung sowie solare und langwellige Strahlungstransfersimulationen durchgeführt. Flugzeuggetragene spektrale aufwärtsgerichtete Radianzen (Strahldichten) sind mit dem SMART-Albedometer (Spectral Modular Airborne Radiation measurement sysTem) während des CIRCLE-2 (CIRrus CLoud Experiment-2) Feldexperiments im Mai 2007 gemessen worden. Basierend auf diesen Radianzdaten werden mittels eines Wolkenretrievalalgorithmus optische Wolkendicken und effektive Eispartikelradien anhand von eindimensionalen Strahlungstransferrechnungen bestimmt. Die Auswirkung der Annahme unterschiedlicher Eiskristallformen auf die retrievten Parameter wird durch Variation der Einfachstreueigenschaften der Eispartikel untersucht. Darüber hinaus wird mittels Strahlungstransferrechnungen auch der Einfluss der Eiskristallform auf den Strahlungsantrieb von Eiswolken ermittelt. Die Frage nach dem relativen Einfluss von räumlicher Wolkeninhomogenität und Eiskristallform wird anhand von dreidimensionalen und independent pixel approximation (IPA) Strahlungssimulationen untersucht. Die Analyse basiert auf einer Modelleiswolke, die aus Daten des NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) TC4 (Tropical Composition, Cloud, and Climate Coupling) Feldexperiments im Sommer 2007 in Costa Rica erzeugt wurde. Lokal gesehen können beide Effekte - Eiskristallform und räumliche Eiswolkeninhomogenität - die gleiche Grössenordnung haben und zu einer Unter- bzw. Überschätzung der retrievten Parameter um 40 – 60% führen. Gemittelt über die ganze Wolke ist jedoch der Einfluss der Eiskristallform viel bedeutender als der von räumlichen Inhomogenitäten.

Measurement of the e + e - pi + pi - pi + pi - cross section using initial state radiation at BABAR

One of the most precisely measured quantities in particle physics is the magnetic moment of the muon, which describes its coupling to an external magnetic field. It is expressed in form of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon a_mu=(g_mu-2)/2 and has been determined experimentally with a precision of 0.5 parts per million. The current direct measurement and the theoretical prediction of the standard model differ by more than 3.5 standard deviations. Concerning theory, the contribution of the QED and weak interaction to a_mu can be calculated with very high precision in a perturbative approach.rnAt low energies, however, perturbation theory cannot be used to determine the hadronic contribution a^had_mu. On the other hand, a^had_mu may be derived via a dispersion relation from the sum of measured cross sections of exclusive hadronic reactions. Decreasing the experimental uncertainty on these hadronic cross sections is of utmost importance for an improved standard model prediction of a_mu.rnrnIn addition to traditional energy scan experiments, the method of Initial State Radiation (ISR) is used to measure hadronic cross sections. This approach allows experiments at colliders running at a fixed centre-of-mass energy to access smaller effective energies by studying events which contain a high-energetic photon emitted from the initial electron or positron. Using the technique of ISR, the energy range from threshold up to 4.5GeV can be accessed at Babar.rnrnThe cross section e+e- -> pi+pi- contributes with approximately 70% to the hadronic part of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon a_mu^had. This important channel has been measured with a precision of better than 1%. Therefore, the leading contribution to the uncertainty of a_mu^had at present stems from the invariant mass region between 1GeV and 2GeV. In this energy range, the channels e+e- -> pi+pi-pi+pi- and e+e- -> pi+pi-pi0pi0 dominate the inclusive hadronic cross section. The measurement of the process e+e- -> pi+pi-pi+pi- will be presented in this thesis. This channel has been previously measured by Babar based on 25% of the total dataset. The new analysis includes a more detailed study of the background contamination from other ISR and non-radiative background reactions. In addition, sophisticated studies of the track reconstruction as well as the photon efficiency difference between the data and the simulation of the Babar detector are performed. With these auxiliary studies, a reduction of the systematic uncertainty from 5.0% to 2.4% in the peak region was achieved.rnrnThe pi+pi-pi+pi- final state has a rich internal structure. Hints are seen for the intermediate states rho(770)^0 f_2(1270), rho(770)^0 f_0(980), as well as a_1(1260)pi. In addition, the branching ratios BR(jpsi -> pi+pi-pi+pi-) and BR(psitwos -> jpsi pi+pi-) are extracted.rn

Measurement of the e + e - pi + pi - cross section using initial state radiation at BESIII

The future goal of modern physics is the discovery of physics beyond the Standard Model. One of the most significant hints for New Physics can be seen in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon - one of the most precise measured variables in modern physics and the main motivation of this work. This variable is associated with the coupling of the muon, an elementary particle, to an external electromagnetic field and is defined as a = (g - 2)/2, whereas g is the gyromagnetic factor of the muon. The muon anomaly has been measured with a relative accuracy of 0.5·10-6. However, a difference between the direct measurement and the Standard Model prediction of 3.6 standard deviations can be observed. This could be a hint for the existence of New Physics. Unfortunately, it is, yet, not significant enough to claim an observation and, thus, more precise measurements and calculations have to be performed.rnThe muon anomaly has three contributions, whereas the ones from quantum electrodynamics and weak interaction can be determined from perturbative calculations. This cannot be done in case of the hadronic contributions at low energies. The leading order contribution - the hadronic vacuum polarization - can be computed via a dispersion integral, which needs as input hadronic cross section measurements from electron-positron annihilations. Hence, it is essential for a precise prediction of the muon anomaly to measure these hadronic cross sections, σ(e+e-→hadrons), with high accuracy. With a contribution of more than 70%, the final state containing two charged pions is the most important one in this context.rnIn this thesis, a new measurement of the σ(e+e-→π+π-) cross section and the pion form factor is performed with an accuracy of 0.9% in the dominant ρ(770) resonance region between 600 and rn900 MeV at the BESIII experiment. The two-pion contribution to the leading-order (LO) hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to (g - 2) from the BESIII result, obtained in this work, is computed to be a(ππ,LO,600-900 MeV) = (368.2±2.5stat±3.3sys)·10-10. With the result presented in this thesis, we make an important contribution on the way to solve the (g - 2) puzzle.

Measurement of volatile organic compounds and total OH reactivity in the atmosphere

Volatile organic compounds play a critical role in ozone formation and drive the chemistry of the atmosphere, together with OH radicals. The simplest volatile organic compound methane is a climatologically important greenhouse gas, and plays a key role in regulating water vapour in the stratosphere and hydroxyl radicals in the troposphere. The OH radical is the most important atmospheric oxidant and knowledge of the atmospheric OH sink, together with the OH source and ambient OH concentrations is essential for understanding the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere. Oceanic emission and / or uptake of methanol, acetone, acetaldehyde, isoprene and dimethyl sulphide (DMS) was characterized as a function of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and a suite of biological parameters, in a mesocosm experiment conducted in the Norwegian fjord. High frequency (ca. 1 minute-1) methane measurements were performed using a gas chromatograph - flame ionization detector (GC-FID) in the boreal forests of Finland and the tropical forests of Suriname. A new on-line method (Comparative Reactivity Method - CRM) was developed to directly measure the total OH reactivity (sink) of ambient air. It was observed that under conditions of high biological activity and a PAR of ~ 450 μmol photons m-2 s-1, the ocean acted as a net source of acetone. However, if either of these criteria was not fulfilled then the ocean acted as a net sink of acetone. This new insight into the biogeochemical cycling of acetone at the ocean-air interface has helped to resolve discrepancies from earlier works such as Jacob et al. (2002) who reported the ocean to be a net acetone source (27 Tg yr-1) and Marandino et al. (2005) who reported the ocean to be a net sink of acetone (- 48 Tg yr-1). The ocean acted as net source of isoprene, DMS and acetaldehyde but net sink of methanol. Based on these findings, it is recommended that compound specific PAR and biological dependency be used for estimating the influence of the global ocean on atmospheric VOC budgets. Methane was observed to accumulate within the nocturnal boundary layer, clearly indicating emissions from the forest ecosystems. There was a remarkable similarity in the time series of the boreal and tropical forest ecosystem. The average of the median mixing ratios during a typical diel cycle were 1.83 μmol mol-1 and 1.74 μmol mol-1 for the boreal forest ecosystem and tropical forest ecosystem respectively. A flux value of (3.62 ± 0.87) x 1011 molecules cm-2 s-1 (or 45.5 ± 11 Tg CH4 yr-1 for global boreal forest area) was derived, which highlights the importance of the boreal forest ecosystem for the global budget of methane (~ 600 Tg yr-1). The newly developed CRM technique has a dynamic range of ~ 4 s-1 to 300 s-1 and accuracy of ± 25 %. The system has been tested and calibrated with several single and mixed hydrocarbon standards showing excellent linearity and accountability with the reactivity of the standards. Field tests at an urban and forest site illustrate the promise of the new method. The results from this study have improved current understanding about VOC emissions and uptake from ocean and forest ecosystems. Moreover, a new technique for directly measuring the total OH reactivity of ambient air has been developed and validated, which will be a valuable addition to the existing suite of atmospheric measurement techniques.