Aerosols
ECV Products and Requirements
These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).
The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Aerosols.
| Products | Aerosol Light Extinction Vertical Profile (Troposphere) | Aerosol Light Extinction Vertical Profile (Stratosphere) | Multi-wavelength Aerosol Optical Depth | Aerosol Single Scattering Albedo | ||||||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Values | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | |||
| Horizontal Resolution | G | km | 50 | 200 | km | 20 | km | 50 | ||
| B | 100 | 500 (lat.) x 6000 (long.) | 100 | 200 | ||||||
| T | 500 | 500 | 500 | |||||||
| Vertical Resolution | G | km | 0.2 | 1 | - | km | 1 | |||
| B | 1 | 1 (2) | - | 5 | ||||||
| T | 2 | 2 | - | |||||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | d | 1 | 5 | d | 0.01 | d | 0.01 | ||
| B | 30 | 5 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| T | 90 | 30 | 30 | 30 | ||||||
| Timeliness | G | y | 0,003 | d | 1 | d | 1 | |||
| B | 0.08 | 7 | 7 | |||||||
| T | 1 | 1 | 30 | 30 | ||||||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | % | 20 | 20 | % or AOD | 4% or 0.02 | dimensionless | 0.1 | ||
| B | 40 | 40 | 10% or 0.030 | 0.2 | ||||||
| T | 60 | 20% or 0.06 | 0.4 | |||||||
| Stability | G | %/decade | 10 | 20 | %/ decade or AOD/ decade | 2% or 0.01 | %/decade | 0.1 | ||
| B | 20 | 40 | 4% or 0.02 | 0.4 | ||||||
| T | 30 | 10% or 0.04 | 1 |
| Products | Chemical Composition of Aerosol Particles | Number of Cloud Condensation Nuclei | Aerosol Number Size Distribution | ||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Values | Values | |
| Horizontal Resolution | G | km | 50 | 50 | 50 |
| B | 100 | 100 | 100 | ||
| T | 500 | 500 | 500 | ||
| Vertical Resolution | G | km | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| B | 5 | 5 | 5 | ||
| T | |||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | d | 1 | 0.5 | 0.04 |
| B | 30 | 1 | 1 | ||
| T | 90 | 30 | 30 | ||
| Timeliness | G | d | 0.1 | 0.04 | 0.25 |
| B | 1 | 1 | 30 | ||
| T | 365 | 365 | 365 | ||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | % | 20 | 20 | 40% in number and 20% on size |
| B | 40 | 40 | 60% in number in 40% in size | ||
| T | 60 | 60 | 40% in number for fine- mode (0.05-0.5um) and 100% in number for coarse- mode (0.5-15um) | ||
| Stability | G | %/decade | 2 | - | 2 |
| B | 2 | - | 4 | ||
| T | 4 | - | 10 | ||
(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful
Data sources
This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the abombelli
wmo [dot] int (GCOS Secretariat).
In Situ Data:
- Aerosol Robotoc Network (Aeronet)
- NASA Micro-Pulse Lidar Network (MPLNET)
- World Data Centre for Aerosols (WDCA)
- Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA)
- Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC)
Reanalysis:
- REANALYSES.ORG (Inventory for Reanalysis)
- Monitoring Atmospheric Composition & Climate (MACC), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
Satellite:
- Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)
