Wildfire Smoke Transport and Impact on Air Quality Observed with a Multi-Wavelength Elastic-Raman Lidar and Ceilometer in New York City

Wildfire smoke plumes have impact on air quality and atmospheric radiative properties in regional to continental scale through the long-range transport pathway. In this study, we present an integrated observation of the wildfire smoke plumes during spring/summer 2016 in New York City (NYC), using combined lidar-ceilometer, satellite and model product. Several episodes indicate that the smoke plumes are located below 8-km altitude and the lower layers are mixed down into the planetary-boundary-layer (PBL). The aerosol optical depths reach up to 0.45 at 532-nm while the Angstrom exponents are 1.7~1.8 at the wavelength pair of 1064-532-nm. Coincident increases of ground PM_2.5 from ~10 μg/m³ to 30 μg/m³ are observed in both NYC urban and upwind non-urban areas (Newburgh/White-plain in NYS or the sites in New Jersey). PM_2.5 speciation such as black carbon and organic carbon will be examined for these cases. The NOAA-HYSPLIT model and satellite aerosol products, including CALIPSO lidar observations, are used to map plume transport paths to NYC for the different episodes and understand their interaction with the boundary layer.