Advanced insights into biomass burning aerosols during the 2023 Canadian wildfires from dual-site Raman and fluorescence lidar observations

Abstract. This study presents lidar observations of long-range transported biomass burning aerosol (BBA) plumes from the exceptional 2023 Canadian wildfire season, recorded between May and September at the ATOLL observatory (France) and the GPI site (Russia). ATOLL operates a multi-wavelength Raman lidar with 3 polarization channels (355, 532 and 1064 nm) and a single fluorescence channel at 466 nm. GPI uses a fluorescence lidar with 5 broadband fluorescence channels excited by 355 nm. The dual-site dataset combines multi-wavelength elastic scattering and depolarization measurements with fluorescence observations, enabling a comprehensive characterization of BBA properties in the free troposphere (FT) and upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS). UTLS layers exhibit higher particle depolarization ratios, slightly lower lidar ratios, lower extinction- and backscatter-related Angström exponents, and a redshift in fluorescence spectral peaks. Cross-site comparisons show consistent fluorescence magnitudes and spectral shapes, highlighting the potential of coordinated multi-lidar fluorescence observations. Correlation analysis indicates that depolarization ratio, extinction-related Angström exponent, and fluorescence color ratio are moderately (r² ≈ 0.61–0.68) correlated with layer altitude, however, this correlation is not sufficient to confirm a solid altitude dependence. It is likely that altitude is an intermediate variable linked to other controlling factors such as injection height of the plume, in-layer temperature and the plume origin. In addition, we observed BBAs showing no clear hygroscopic growth at RH of 90 %–100 % and statistically low RH values in the detected nearly 100 layers, suggesting aged BBAs, which were typically considered as hygroscopic, may have limited water uptake capability.