From EARLINET-ASOS Raman-Lidar Signals to Microphysical Aerosol Properties Via Advanced Regularizing Software

Knowledge on the aerosol distribution in the Earth´s atmosphere is not sufficient to calculate or even estimate the impact of aerosols on global and regional climate. One of the techniques to gain more knowledge in this field is advanced lidar remote sensing. Indeed, there are several problems connected with the retrieval of microphysical parameters of the aerosol from the data gained by Raman lidar measurements. The calculation can be reduced to two basic steps; in the first step, the aerosol extinction and backscatter profiles have to be extracted from the Raman signals, then those profiles are used for the retrieval of the microphysical properties. In the framework of the EARLINET-ASOS project, new algorithms for both of these parts of the problem are being developed with the long-term goal of being used for a continuous data evaluation of the data produced by the EARLINET stations.