Aerosols Optical Properties Profile Characterization Over São Vicente, Cabo Verde, During the ASKOS Campaign

Studying the vertical distribution of aerosol particles is an important aspect for understanding their influence on the climate system. One way to evaluate the impact of aerosols is to discriminate their source and optical properties. The main objective of this study is to characterize and analyze aerosol’s optical properties profile under distinct aerosol mixture states over São Vicente Island, Cabo Verde, during the ASKOS campaign that took part from July to September of 2021. A recently developed method, the Elastic Extinction (ElEx), which allows aerosol backscattering profile separations by type and estimation of total extinction coefficient, has been applied. Conducting a case study of pure Saharan dust dominance in the free troposphere and marine particles in the Marine Boundary Layer (MBL), the ElEx method revealed the ability to discriminate consistently the vertical distribution of the two types of aerosols.