Sang-Woo Kim

Abstract. Aerosol particles are essential constituents of the Earth's atmosphere, impacting the earth radiation balance directly by scattering and absorbing solar radiation, and indirectly by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. In contrast to most greenhouse gases, aerosol particles have short atmospheric residence times, resulting in a highly heterogeneous distribution in space and time. There is a clear need to document this variability at regional scale through observations involving, in par

Abstract. This paper is an overview of the progress in sky radiometer technology and the development of the network called SKYNET. It is found that the technology has produced useful on-site calibration methods, retrieval algorithms, and data analyses from sky radiometer observations of aerosol, cloud, water vapor, and ozone. A formula was proposed for estimating the accuracy of the sky radiometer calibration constant F0 using the improved Langley (IL) method, which was found to be a good approx

Abstract. In order to assess the evolution of aerosol parameters affecting climate change, a long-term trend analysis of aerosol optical properties was performed on time series from 52 stations situated across five continents. The time series of measured scattering, backscattering and absorption coefficients as well as the derived single scattering albedo, backscattering fraction, scattering and absorption Ångström exponents covered at least 10 years and up to 40 years for some stations. The non

Abstract The Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) aerosol optical depth (AOD) has been compared with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)‐Aqua AOD using Level 2 products of both instruments. Such comparisons have been performed for five different aerosol subtypes classified by CALIOP algorithm, namely clean marine, dust, polluted dust, polluted continental, and biomass burning, over the ocean from June 2006 to December 2010. MODIS AOD at 550 nm (0.111 ±

Abstract. Aerosol particles are a complex component of the atmospheric system which influence climate directly by interacting with solar radiation, and indirectly by contributing to cloud formation. The variety of their sources, as well as the multiple transformations they may undergo during their transport (including wet and dry deposition), result in significant spatial and temporal variability of their properties. Documenting this variability is essential to provide a proper representation of

This study investigates the effect of water vapor associated with mineral dust aerosols on atmospheric radiative heating rates using ground‐based lidar, aircraft, radiosonde measurements and a radiation model during Asian dust events in the spring of 2001. We found enhanced levels of water vapor within the dust layer relative to the air above and below the dust layer. The water vapor led to an increase in the net radiative heating rate within the dust layer, changing the heating rate vertical st

Comparisons of aerosol optical depths (AODs) determined from several types of Sun photometers operating side by side as part of four different networks (GAW PFR, AERONET, SKYNET, and NOAA/ESRL aerosol monitoring programs) were made at 6 different environmental stations to evaluate the different types of current state-of-the-art instruments under different aerosol loading conditions. A comparison between AERONET CIMEL and GAW PFR at a high altitude calibration site, Mauna Loa, shows an excellent