Climatology of aerosol types and their vertical distribution over East Asia based on CALIPSO lidar measurements

Aerosol vertical distribution generally determines their health impacts and climate effects. By using long-term (2007–2019) CALIPSO lidar measurements, we present a large-scale insight into the climatology of aerosol types and their vertical structure over East Asia. Despite the low sampling frequency, comparison with MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) shows that the integrated CAIPSO vertical extinction can reasonably reproduce spatial patterns of the aerosol loading. With the unique advantage of active detection, CALIPSO reveals an obvious enhancement of the night-time AOD due to worse diffusion conditions. Moreover, long-range transport of different aerosols including dust, polluted dust, and smoke has substantial contribution to the aerosol loading over East Asia. Pure dust particles are mainly concentrated over the deserts with notable dust transport belts (dust AOD > 0.2 at 532 nm) along downwind regions during winter and spring. By contrast, polluted dust is prevalent over the downstream eastern China with much higher AODs throughout the year. In particular, AOD of polluted dust (~0.5) is higher in winter rather than in spring, which is consistent with their seasonal occurrences. Smoke aerosols usually appear in the night-time over southern China. The top heights of aerosols are around 4–6 km, with dust and smoke having higher extinction at upstream regions. The climatology of these aerosol types and vertical distribution can provide a significant constraint for associated studies of air quality and climate effects.