Lidar Studies of Spatial and Temporal Distributions of Aerosols at Mace Head: Influence of Local Sources

During the PARFORCE experiments at the Mace Head Research Station. a backscatter lidar was used to measure the boundary layer structure and the height of cloud layers. Horizontal and vertical scans were made over a field of view of 130 degrees in westerly direction over rhe North Atlantic. to horizontal distances of more than l0 km. The horizontal scans show the generation of sea spray aerosol by waves breaking on islands and rocks in the bay. vertical scans show that the aerosols are generated in plumes that initially are some tens of meters high, and evolve to several hundreds of meters over distances of a few kilometres. The plumes can be followed with the lidar over distances of more than 5 km. Consecutive scans show the temporal and spatial evolution of the aerosol plumes. Elevated backscatter coefficients indicate the influence of locally generated aerosol on the contenffations at the Mace Head field station