Characterization of the atmospheric aerosol by combination of lidar and sun-photometry

During the summer 2006 an extended observational campaign of atmospheric aerosol has been developed in the area of Granada, South-eastern Spain. From July to the end of September two Cimel CE-318 radiometers have been operated continuously, one at Andalusian Centre for Environmental Studies (CEAMA), located in the urban area of Granada, a non-industrialized medium size city (37.16ºN, 3.61ºW and 680 m a.m.s.l.), and the second one at the Astronomical Observatory of Sierra Nevada (37.06ºN, 3.38ºW and 2896 m a.m.s.l.), with a short horizontal separation between stations that allows us to consider both instrument located in approximately the same vertical column. The Cimel CE-318 measurements have been used to retrieve the aerosol columnar properties, including the columnar volume size distribution, volume scattering phase function, asymmetry factor and single scattering albedo, by means of appropriate inversion procedures. Additionally, at the CEAMA a Raman Lidar system based on a Nd:YAG laser source operating at 1064, 532 and 355 nm and including elastic, polarized and Raman shifted detection has been used to derive profiles of several atmospheric aerosol properties. In this paper we present analyses of the changes and temporal evolution detected in atmospheric aerosol vertical profile. Several long range transport episodes have been detected and back-trajectories analyses and synoptic information have been used in the discussion of results.

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