Measurement report: A survey of meteorological and cloud properties during ACTIVATE’s postfrontal flights and their suitability for Lagrangian case studies

Tornow, Florian; Fridlind, Ann; Tselioudis, George; Cairns, Brian; Ackerman, Andrew; Chellappan, Seethala; Painemal, David; Zuidema, Paquita; Voigt, Christiane; Kirschler, Simon; Sorooshian, Armin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5053-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5053-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5053-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 9

Measurement report

|

16 May 2025

Measurement report |

| 16 May 2025

Measurement report: A survey of meteorological and cloud properties during ACTIVATE’s postfrontal flights and their suitability for Lagrangian case studies

Florian Tornow, Ann Fridlind, George Tselioudis, Brian Cairns, Andrew Ackerman, Seethala Chellappan, David Painemal, Paquita Zuidema, Christiane Voigt, Simon Kirschler, and Armin Sorooshian

Data sets

inst3_3d_asm_Cp: MERRA-2 3D IAU State, Meteorology Instantaneous 3-hourly (p-coord, 0.625x0.5L42) Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) https://doi.org/10.5067/VJAFPLI1CSIV

ACTIVATE GOES-16 Supplementary Data Products NASA/LaRC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/ASDC/SUBORBITAL/ACTIVATE-Satellite_1

ACTIVATE King Air Aerosol and Cloud Remotely Sensed Data NASA/LaRC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/ASDC/ACTIVATE_AerosolCloud_AircraftRemoteSensing_KingAir_Data_1

ACTIVATE Falcon In Situ Cloud Data NASA/LaRC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/ASDC/ACTIVATE_Cloud_AircraftInSitu_Falcon_Data_1

Model code and software

Front Detection Sam Green et al. https://github.com/coecms/frontdetection/tree/main

Short summary

The recent NASA campaign ACTIVATE (Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment) performed 71 tandem flights in mid-latitude marine cold-air outbreaks off the US eastern seaboard. We provide meteorological and cloud transition stage context, allowing us to identify days that are most suitable for Lagrangian modeling and analysis. Surveyed cloud properties show signatures of cloud microphysical processes, such as cloud-top entrainment and secondary ice formation.