Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics www.atmos-chem-phys.net 1680-7316 1680-7324 9 14 2009 10.5194/acp-9-4811-2009 http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/4811/2009/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/4811/2009/acp-9-4811-2009.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/4811/2009/acp-9-4811-2009.pdf 4811 4826 2009-07-22 NASA LaRC airborne high spectral resolution lidar aerosol measurements during MILAGRO: observations and validation R. R. Rogers raymond.r.rogers@nasa.gov J. W. Hair C. A. Hostetler R. A. Ferrare M. D. Obland A. L. Cook D. B. Harper S. P. Burton Y. Shinozuka C. S. McNaughton A. D. Clarke J. Redemann P. B. Russell J. M. Livingston L. I. Kleinman NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA SSAI/NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA University of Hawaii, Dept. of Oceanography, Honolulu, HI, USA BAERI/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA SRI International/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) measures vertical profiles of aerosol extinction, backscatter, and depolarization at both 532 nm and 1064 nm. In March of 2006 the HSRL participated in the Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Observations (MILAGRO) campaign along with several other suites of instruments deployed on both aircraft and ground based platforms. This paper presents high spatial and vertical resolution HSRL measurements of aerosol extinction and optical depth from MILAGRO and comparisons of those measurements with similar measurements from other sensors and model predictions. HSRL measurements coincident with airborne in situ aerosol scattering and absorption measurements from two different instrument suites on the C-130 and G-1 aircraft, airborne aerosol optical depth (AOD) and extinction measurements from an airborne tracking sunphotometer on the J-31 aircraft, and AOD from a network of ground based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) sun photometers are presented as a validation of the HSRL aerosol extinction and optical depth products. Regarding the extinction validation, we find bias differences between HSRL and these instruments to be less than 3% (0.01 km^−1) at 532 nm, the wavelength at which the HSRL technique is employed. The rms differences at 532 nm were less than 50% (0.015 km^−1). 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