Bianca Lauster

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Bianca Lauster for the poster/PICO entitled:

Occurrence of Polar Stratospheric Clouds using ground-based DOAS observations (Lauster, B.; Dörner, S.; Frieß, U.; Gu, M.; Pukīte, J.; Wagner, T.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Bianca Lauster is a master student at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her research in the Satellite Remote Sensing group led by Prof. Thomas Wagner at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, focuses on DOAS (Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy) measurements.

The work presented and awarded at the vEGU 2021 shows the usability of ground-based zenith DOAS data for the retrieval of Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs). Hereby, the so-called Colour Index (CI), i.e. the intensity ratio of the scattered sun light at two different wavelengths, is used to investigate the occurrence of PSCs. With the help of the radiative transfer model McArtim, the variation in CI is analysed in the UV and visible spectral range. The method is then applied to the measurement time series of the DOAS instrument which has been operating at the German research station Neumayer, Antarctica, since 1999. The comparison with independent satellite data (MIPAS) confirms the possibility of using this method to retrieve information on the PSC occurrence for different weather conditions. Thereby, long time series, such as the one presented here, are a valuable complement to other data sets.