The SOLA Award in 2021

Abstract

The Editorial Committee of Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere (SOLA) gives The SOLA Award to outstanding paper(s) published each year. We are pleased to announce that The SOLA Award in 2021 will be presented to the paper by Drs. Koichi Shiraishi and Takashi Shibata, entitled “Seasonal variation in high arctic stratospheric aerosols observed by lidar at Ny Ålesund, Svalbard between March 2014 and February 2018” (Shiraishi and Shibata 2021).
Stratospheric aerosols play essential roles in radiative and chemical processes in the atmosphere and impact the climate of the Earth. The lidar observations of the temporal and spatial variations of the aerosols will provide essential information to understand the atmospheric processes related to the aerosols. Thus, there have been many studies on lidar observations of aerosols in the low and middle latitude regions. However, the observations in the Arctic are limited. In particular, there are no long-term observations of stratospheric aerosols throughout the year in the high Arctic. This study investigates the seasonal variations of stratospheric aerosols in the high Arctic by using long-term observations for about four years at Ny Ålesund, Svalbard. By carefully removing data affected by polar stratospheric clouds and volcanic eruption, the analysis shows the robust characteristics of the seasonal variations of background aerosols in the stratosphere. It is found that the backscattering ratio takes maximum values at altitudes between 13 and 16 km from December to March and at altitudes between 17 and 20 km from April to November. This observational evidence is highly evaluated in presenting the seasonal variations of stratospheric aerosols in the high Arctic, which will be helpful to understand the dynamical and chemical processes in the stratosphere.
The Editorial Committee of SOLA highly evaluates the significance of this study and therefore presents “The SOLA Award.”