Aerosol absorption profiling from the synergy of lidar and sun-photometry: the ACTRIS-2 campaigns in Germany, Greece and Cyprus

¹ Institute for Astronomy Astrophysics Space Applications and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, Athens, Greece,
² Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, Université de Lille, Lille, France
³ Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
⁴ Finnish Meteorological Institute, Kuopio, Finland
⁵ Department of Environmental Physics and Meteorology, Faculty of Physics, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
⁶ The Cyprus Institute, Environment Energy and Water Research Center, Nicosia, Cyprus
⁷ Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens, Athens, Greece
⁸ Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Leipzig, Germany
⁹ Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland
¹⁰ Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
¹¹ School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
¹² National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics, Magurele, Ilfov, Romania
¹³ Physics Department, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
¹⁴ Institute of Geophysics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

^* atsekeri@noa.gr

Published online: 13 April 2018

Abstract

Aerosol absorption profiling is crucial for radiative transfer calculations and climate modelling. Here, we utilize the synergy of lidar with sun-photometer measurements to derive the absorption coefficient and single scattering albedo profiles during the ACTRIS-2 campaigns held in Germany, Greece and Cyprus. The remote sensing techniques are compared with in situ measurements in order to harmonize and validate the different methodologies and reduce the absorption profiling uncertainties.