Measurement report: An investigation of the spatiotemporal variability in aerosols in the mountainous terrain of the upper Colorado River basin using SAIL-Net

Abstract

Abstract. In the western US and similar topographic regions across the world, precipitation in the mountains is crucial to local and downstream freshwater supplies. Atmospheric aerosols can impact clouds and precipitation by acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice-nucleating particles (INPs). Previous studies suggest that there is increased aerosol variability in these regions due to their complex terrain, but none of these studies have quantified the extent of this variability. In the fall of 2021, Handix Scientific contributed to the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL), funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and situated in the East River watershed (ERW; Colorado, USA), by deploying SAIL-Net, a novel network of six aerosol measurement nodes spanning the horizontal and vertical domains of SAIL. The ERW is a topographically diverse region, meaning individual measurement sites can miss important observations of aerosol–cloud interactions. Each measurement node included a small particle counter (the Portable Optical Particle Spectrometer – POPS), a miniature CCN counter (CloudPuck), and a filter sampler (the Time-Resolved Aerosol Particle Sampler – TRAPS) for INP analysis. SAIL-Net studied the spatiotemporal variability in aerosols and the usefulness of dense measurement networks in complex terrain. After the project's completion in the summer of 2023, we analyzed the data to explore these topics. We found increased variability compared to a similar study over flat land. This variability was correlated with the elevation of the sites, and the extent of the variability changed seasonally. These data and analyses serve as a valuable resource for continued research into the role of aerosols in the hydrologic cycle and as the foundation for designing measurement networks in complex terrain.

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