Speaker
Description
Solar radiation management has been proposed as a method to combat and control changes in the climate of Earth. The method aims at the intentional releasing of aerosol into the atmosphere to adjust radiative forcing. However, there is significant uncertainty in the evolution of artificial aerosol particles, as well as the atmospheric dynamics of such a release. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), lead by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, wishes to study solar radiation management with the goal of reducing the uncertainty of such an exercise.
The SCoPEx project has done significant work on modelling the evolution of artificial aerosol particles as they would be released from a stratospheric balloon. To complement this, the SCoPEx project purposes a localized experiment, in which a small amount of aerosol is released from such a balloon, to validate and advance the understanding.
The Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI) is a multi-spectral polarimetric imager. ALI is designed for operation on a stratospheric balloon platform and takes images of limb scattered sunlight at two orthogonal polarization states. ALI images produce spectral measurements between 500 nm and 1500 nm with a tangential altitude resolution of < 100 meters.
The observational technique of ALI allows it to serve as an ideal measurement tool for an experiment such as that purposed by SCoPEx. In pursuit of this endeavour, modelling has been done to simulate ALI observations of localized aerosol plumes in efforts to determine the extent of information limb measurements can yield.
