Speaker
Description
HAWC (High-altitude Aerosols, Water vapour and Clouds) is a new Canadian mission with three instruments designed to measure aerosol, clouds, water vapour and radiation in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere (UTLS). The Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI), focuses on aerosol and high clouds by taking two dimensional, multi-spectral images of Earth’s limb in the visible and near infrared to retrieve aerosol extinction profiles and particle size. With the ability to measure dual polarization states, ALI will also provide information on cloud top altitude and phase unprecedented from a limb viewing mission. The other limb viewing instrument on HAWC is the Spatial Heterodyne Observations of Water (SHOW), which will provide coincident, high resolution vertical profiles of water vapour. In the fall of 2023, ALI and SHOW will partake in an ER-2 aircraft campaign to test the instruments and retrieval algorithms. This work will present an overview of the ALI instrument and the science enabled through the coordinated retrievals with SHOW and the upcoming aircraft campaign.
