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We present smoke lidar measurements from the Canadian fires of 2017. The advected smoke layers over Europe are detected at both tropospheric and stratospheric heights, with the latter presenting non-typical values of the Particle Linear Depolarization Ratio (PLDR) with strong wavelength dependence from the UV to the Near-IR. Specifically, the PLDR values are of the order of 22, 18 and 4% at 355, 532 and 1064 nm respectively. In an attempt to interpret these results, we apply the hypothesis that smoke particles have near-spherical shapes. Scattering calculations with the T-matrix code support other findings in the literature ([1]- [2]), showing that the near-spherical shape (or closely similar shapes as in [2]), is the only shape that has been shown to reproduce the observed PLDR and Lidar Ratio (LR) values of the stratospheric smoke particles at the three measurement wavelengths.

We present the EVE lidar concept, a combined linear/circular polarization system, tailored to evaluate the spaceborne ALADIN Doppler lidar system aerosol retrievals. EVE, currently under development, aims to provide the ESA-Aeolus mission with a flexible, mobile reference ground-based lidar system capable of providing well-characterized fiducial reference measurements of aerosol optical properties. Since ALADIN detects only the co-polar component of the backscattered circularly polarized radiation, a portion of the received radiation gets lost, leading to an un-derestimation of the backscatter coefficient and the circular depolarization ratio in strongly depolarizing scenes with non-spherical particles. The main focus of the new EVE lidar is to quantify these uncertainties and to evaluate aerosol backscatter/extinction retrievals for Aeolus, and later also for EarthCARE product validation, quality assessment and improvement.

This study documents a complex fire event that occurred on October 2016, in Middle East belligerent area. Two fire outbreaks were detected by different spacecraft monitoring instruments on board of TERRA, CALIPSO and AURA Earth Observation missions. Link with local weather conditions was examined using ERA Interim Reanalysis and CAMS datasets. The detection of the event by multiple sensors enabled a detailed characterization of fires and the comparison with different observational data.

The Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) onboard the International Space Station (ISS), is a lidar system providing vertically resolved aerosol and cloud profiles since February 2015. In this study, the CATS aerosol product is validated against the aerosol profiles provided by the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET). This validation activity is based on collocated CATS-EARLINET measurements and the comparison of the particle backscatter coefficient at 1064nm.

In August 2015, the AER-D campaign made use of the FAAM research aircraft based in Cape Verde, and targeted mineral dust. First results will be shown here. The campaign had multiple objectives: (1) lidar dust mapping for the validation of satellite and model products; (2) validation of sunphotometer remote sensing with airborne measurements; (3) coordinated measurements with the CATS lidar on the ISS; (4) radiative closure studies; and (5) the validation of a new model of dustsonde.

By means of available ice nucleating particle (INP) parameterization schemes we compute profiles of dust INP number concentration utilizing Polly-XT and CALIPSO lidar observations during the INUIT-BACCHUS-ACTRIS 2016 campaign. The polarization-lidar photometer networking (POLIPHON) method is used to separate dust and non-dust aerosol backscatter, extinction, mass concentration, particle number concentration (for particles with radius > 250 nm) and surface area concentration. The INP final products are compared with aerosol samples collected from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and analyzed using the ice nucleus counter FRIDGE.

We present a 3D multi-year monthly mean climatology of Saharan dust advection over Europe using an area-optimized pure dust CALIPSO product. The product has been developed by applying EARLINET-measured dust lidar ratios and depolarization-based dust discrimination methods and it is shown to have a very good agreement in terms of AOD when compared to AERONET over Europe/North Africa and MODIS over Mediterranean. The processing of such purely observational data reveals the certain seasonal patterns of dust transportation towards Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. The physical and optical properties of the dust layer are identified for several areas near the Saharan sources, over the Mediterranean and over continental Europe.