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Black carbon aerosol emissions are recognized as contributors to global warming and air pollution. There remains, however, a lack of in-situ techniques to remotely quantify black carbon aerosol particles with high range and time resolution. This article presents for the first time, to our knowledge, a direct and contact-free remote measurement of black carbon aerosol number and mass concentration less than ten of meters from the emission source. This is done with a novel picosecond short-range elastic backscatter lidar (PSR-EBL) technique. To address the complexity of retrieving lidar products at short measurement ranges, we apply a forward inversion method featuring radiometric lidar calibration. Our method is based on an extension of a well-established light-scattering model, the Rayleigh-Debye-Gans for Fractal-Aggregates (RDG-FA) theory, which computes an analytical expression for lidar parameters. These parameters are the backscattering cross-sections and the lidar ratio for black carbon fractal aggregates. Using a small-scale Jet A-1 kerosene pool fire, it is shown that our technique can quantify the aerosol number and mass concentration with centimetre range-resolution and millisecond time-resolution.; Les émissions d'aérosols de carbone noir sont reconnues comme contribuant au réchauffement climatique et à la pollution de l'air. Il reste cependant un manque de techniques pour quantifier à distance les particules d'aérosol de noir de carbone avec une plage et une résolution temporelle élevées. Cet article présente une technique à distance directe et sans contact pour quantifier le nombre d'aérosols de carbone noir et la concentration massique à quelques mètres de la source d'émission. Cela se fait à l'aide de l'instrument Colibri basé sur une nouvelle technique, appelée ici Picosecond Short-Range Elastic Backscatter Lidar (PSR-EBL). Pour faire face à la complexité de la récupération des produits lidar à de courtes plages de mesure, nous appliquons une méthode d'inversion directe avec étalonnage radiométrique du lidar. Notre méthode est basée sur une extension d'un modèle de diffusion de la lumière bien établi, la théorie Rayleigh-Debye-Gans for Fractal-Aggregates (RDG-FA), qui calcule une expression analytique des paramètres lidar. Ces paramètres sont les sections efficaces de rétrodiffusion et le rapport lidar pour les agrégats fractals de carbone noir. À l'aide d'un feu de nappe de kérosène Jet A-1 à petite échelle, nous démontrons la capacité de la technique à quantifier le nombre d'aérosols et la concentration en masse avec une résolution centimétrique et une résolution temporelle en millisecondes.

This work focuses on the analysis of the seasonal cycle of temperature and relative humidity (RH) profiles and integrated water vapor (IWV) obtained from microwave radiometer (MWR) measurements over the mid-latitude city of Granada, southern Spain. For completeness the study, the maximum atmospheric boundary layer height (ABLHmax) is also included. To this end, we have firstly characterized the HATPRO-RPG MWR errors using 55 co-located radiosondes (RS) by means of the mean-bias (biasbar) profile and the standard deviation (SDbias) profile classified under all-weather conditions and cloud-free conditions. This characterization pointed out that temperature from HATPRO-MWR presents a very low biasbar respects RS mostly below 2.0 km agl, ranging from positive to negative values under all-weather conditions (from 1.7 to -0.4 K with SDbias up to 3.0 K). Under cloud-free conditions, the bias was very similar to that found under all-weather conditions (1.8 to -0.4 K) but with smaller SDbias (up to 1.1 K). The same behavior is also seen in this lower part (ground to 2.0 km agl) for RH. Under all-weather conditions, the mean RH bias ranged from 3.0 to -4.0% with SDbias between 10 and 16.3% while under cloud-free conditions the bias ranged from 2.0 to -0.4% with SDbias from 0.5 to 13.3%. Above 2.0 km agl, the SDbias error increases considerably up to 4 km agl (up to -20%), and then decreases slightly above 7.0 km agl (up to -5%). In addition, IWV values from MWR were also compared with the values obtained from the integration of RS profiles, showing a better linear fit under cloud-free conditions (R2 = 0.96) than under all-weather conditions (R2 = 0.82). The mean bias under cloud-free conditions was -0.80 kg/m2 while for all-weather conditions it was -1.25 kg/m2. Thus, the SDbiasfor all the statistics (temperature, RH and IWV) of the comparison between MWR and RS presented higher values for all-weather conditions than for cloud-free conditions ones. It points out that the presence of clouds is a key factor to take into account when MWR products are used. The second part of this work is devoted to a seasonal variability analysis over five years, leading us to characterize thermodynamically the troposphere over our site. This city atmosphere presents a clear seasonal cycle where temperature, ABLHmax and IWV increase from winter to summer and decrease in autumn, meanwhile RH decreases along the warmer seasons. This city presents cold winters (mean daily maximum temperature: 10.6 ± 1.1 °C) and dry/hot summers (mean daily maximum temperature of 28.8 ± 0.9 °C and mean daily maximum of surface RH up to 55.0 ± 6.0%) at surface (680 m asl). Moreover, considering temporal trends, our study pointed out that only temperature and RH showed a linear increase in winters with a mean-rate of (0.5 ± 0.1) °C/year and (3.4 ± 1.7) %/year, respectively, from ground to 2.0 km agl, meanwhile IWV presented a linear increase of 1.0 kg·m-2/year in winters, 0.78 kg·m-2/year in summers and a linear decrease in autumns of -0.75 kg·m-2/year., Andalusia Regional Government through project P12-RNM-2409, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through projects CGL2013-45410-R, CGL2015-73250-JIN and CGL2016-81092-R, Juan de la Cierva grant IJCI-2016-30007

The Sierra Nevada Lidar aerOsol Profiling Experiment I and II (SLOPE I and II) campaigns were intended to determine the vertical structure of the aerosol by remote sensing instruments and test the various retrieval schemes for obtaining aerosol microphysical and optical properties with in-situ measurements. These campaigns deployed a set of in-situ and remote sensing instruments at the stations include in AGORA observatory (Andalusian Global ObseRvatory of the Atmosphere) in the Granada area (Spain) along summer in 2016 and 2017. In this work, using the in-situ measurements performed at a high-altitude station, Sierra Nevada station, and airborne flights, we evaluate the retrievals of aerosol properties by GRASP code (Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties) combining lidar and sun-sky photometer measurements. Besides, we show an overview of aerosol properties retrieved by GRASP during SLOPE I and II campaigns. We evaluate the GRASP retrievals of total aerosol volume concentration (discerning between fine and coarse modes), extinction and scattering coefficients, and for the first time we present an evaluation of absorption coefficient. The statistical analysis of the aerosol optical and microphysical properties, both column-integrated and vertically-resolved, from May to July 2016 and 2017 shows a large variability in aerosol load and types. The results show a strong predominance of desert dust particles due to the North African intrusions. The vertically-resolved analysis denotes a decay of the atmospheric aerosols with altitude up to 5 km a.s.l. Finally, two events of desert dust and biomass burning were used to show the high potential of GRASP to retrieve and study the aerosol properties profiles such as absorption coefficient and single scattering albedo for different aerosol types. The aerosol properties retrieved by GRASP show good agreement with simultaneous in situ measurements performed at Sierra Nevada Station (SNS) in Granada. In general, GRASP overestimates the in situ data at SNS with a mean difference lower than 6 µm3/cm3 for volume concentration, 11 Mm−1 and 2 Mm−1 for scattering and absorption coefficient. On the other hand, the comparison of GRASP with airborne measurements also shows an overestimation with mean absolute differences of 14 ± 10 Mm−1 and 1.2 ± 1.2 Mm−1 for scattering and absorption coefficients, showing a better agreement for absorption (scattering) coefficient with higher (lower) aerosol optical depth. The potentiality of GRASP showed in this study will contribute to enhancing the representativeness of the aerosol vertical distribution and provide information for satellite and global model evaluation.

Vibrational Raman effect is widely used in atmospheric lidar systems, but rotational Raman present several advantages. We have implemented a new setup in the ultraviolet branch of an existing multiwavelength lidar system to collect signal from rotational Raman lines of Oxygen and Nitrogen. We showed that, with an appropriate filter wavelength selection, the systematic error introduced in the particle optical properties due to temperature dependence was less than 4%. With this new setup, we have been able to retrieve aerosol extinction and backscatter coefficients profiles at 355 nm with 1-h time resolution during daytime and up to 1-min time resolution during nighttime., Grupo de Física de la Atmósfera (RNM119)

The Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) is a relevant part of the atmosphere with a variable extension that clearly plays an important role in fields like air quality or weather forecasting. Passive and active remote sensing systems have been widely applied to analyze PBL characteristics. The combination of different remote sensing techniques allows obtaining a complete picture on the PBL dynamic. In this study, we analyze the PBL using microwave radiometer, elastic lidar and Doppler lidar data. We use co-located data simultaneously gathered in the framework of SLOPE-I (Sierra Nevada Lidar aerOsol Profiling Experiment) campaign at Granada (Spain) during a 90- day period in summer 2016. Firstly, the PBL height (PBLH) obtained from microwave radiometer data is validated against PBLH provided by analyzing co-located radiosondes, showing a good agreement. In a second stage, active remote sensing systems are used for deriving the PBLH. Thus, an extended Kalman filter method is applied to data obtained by the elastic lidar while the vertical wind speed variance method is applied to the Doppler lidar. PBLH′s derived by these approaches are compared to PBLH retrieved by the microwave radiometer. The results show a good agreement among these retrievals based on active remote sensing in most of the cases, although some discrepancies appear in instances of intense PBL changes (either growth and/or decrease).

The financial support by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (ACTRIS-2, grant agreement no. 654109) is gratefully acknowledged. The investigation was supported by the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental, Research Agreement No. F18EA-011, by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant No. 18-55-81001), and also by Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (project code QTRU05.01/18-20). The Portuguese team acknowledges the support from the Portuguese Science Foundation, in the frame of the European Regional Development Fund -COMPETE 2020, under the projects UID/GEO/04683/2013 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007690), The paper presents the preliminary results of the lidar&radiometer measurement campaign (LRMC2017), estimation of statistical relations between aerosol mode concentrations retrieved from CALIOP and ground-based lidar stations and case study of fire smoke events in the Eurasian regions using combined ground-based and space lidar and radiometer observations., European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (ACTRIS-2) 654109, Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental, Research F18EA-011, Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) 18-55-81001, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology QTRU05.01/18-20, Portuguese Science Foundation, in the frame of the European Regional Development Fund -COMPETE 2020 UID/GEO/04683/2013 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007690)

This study evaluates the potential of GRASP algorithm (Generalized Retrieval of Aerosol and Surface Properties) to retrieve continuous day-to-night aerosol properties, both column-integrated and vertically-resolved. The study is focused on the evaluation of GRASP retrievals during an intense Saharan dust event that occurred during the Sierra Nevada Lidar aerOsol Profiling Experiment I (SLOPE I) field campaign. For daytime aerosol retrievals, we combined the measurements of the lidar ground-based from EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network) station and sun/sky photometer from AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network), both instruments co-located in Granada (Spain). However, for night-time retrievals three different combinations of active and passive remote sensing measurements are proposed. The first scheme (N0) uses lidar night-time measurements in combination with the interpolation of sun/sky daytime measurements. The other two schemes combine lidar night-time measurements with night-time aerosol optical depth obtained by lunar photometry either using intensive properties of the aerosol retrieved during sun/sky daytime measurements (N1) or using the moon aureole radiance obtained by sky camera images (N2). Evaluations of the columnar aerosol properties retrieved by GRASP are done versus standard AERONET retrievals. The coherence of day-to-night evolutions of the different aerosol properties retrieved by GRASP is also studied. The extinction coefficient vertical profiles retrieved by GRASP are compared with the profiles calculated by Raman technique at night-time with differences below 30% for all schemes at 355, 532 and 1064 nm. Finally, the volume concentration and scattering coefficient retrieved by GRASP at 2500 m a.s.l. are evaluated by in-situ measurements at this height at Sierra Nevada Station. The differences between GRASP and in-situ measurements are similar for the different schemes, with differences below 30 % for both volume concentration and scattering coefficient. In general, for the scattering coefficient, the GRASP N0 and N1 show better results than the GRASP N2 schemes, while for volume concentration, GRASP N2 shows the lowest differences against in-situ measurements, around 10 %, for high the aerosol optical depth values.

International audience; Ceilometers are widely spread instruments mainly used for cloud base height determination. However, recent models are more sensitive to aerosols; hence, nowadays there is an increasing interest in these instruments to retrieve aerosol optical and microphysical properties.The high number of them distributed around the globe compared to the robust lidar systems and the fact that ceilometers work under unattended conditions are the main reasons behind this interest. In this paper a new methodology is proposed to retrieve aerosol vertical extinction and backscatter profiles from a Vaisala ceilometer CL51. This methodology is based in two parts: first, a signal pre-processing with a suppression of the dark current and background noises, and a correction of the water vapor absorption using near-real time temperature and absolute humidity (AH) profiles from a co-located Microwave radiometer (MWR). Then an iterative Klett-based algorithm that uses AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) AOD (Aerosol Optical Depth) as an input to retrieve the extinction and backscatter profiles. The error analysis of the aerosol retrievals has been performed between MWR measurements and modelled radiosondes from HYSPLIT. The absolute errors found in temperature and AH are leading to errors in the pre-processed RCS signals up to 9%, and then in particle backscatter and particle extinction coefficients up to 2:2% and 25%, respectively.; Les ceilomètres sont des instruments très répandus, principalement utilisés pour déterminer la hauteur de la base des nuages. Cependant, des modèles récents sont plus sensibles aux aérosols ; c'est pourquoi, de nos jours, on s'intéresse de plus en plus à ces instruments pour mesurer des données optiques des aérosols et leurs propriétés microphysiques. Le nombre élevé de ces derniers, répartis dans le monde entier, par rapport aux systèmes lidar robustes et le fait que les plafonds fonctionnent dans des conditions non surveillées sont les principales raisons de cet intérêt. Dans ce document, une nouvelle méthodologie est proposée pour déterminer par inversion les profils d'extinction verticale et de rétrodiffusion des aérosols à partir d'un modèle CL51 de ceilomètre de Vaisala. Cette méthodologie est basée sur deux parties : premièrement, un prétraitement du signal avec une suppression du courant d'obscurité et du fond et une correction de l'absorption de la vapeur d'eau en utilisant des profils de température et d'humidité absolue (AH) en temps quasi réel d'un radiomètre à micro-ondes (MWR) colocalisé. Ensuite, un algorithme itératif basé sur Klett qui utilise AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) AOD (Aerosol Optical Depth) comme entrée est appliquée pour récupérer les profils d'extinction et de rétrodiffusion. Les erreurs absolues trouvées dans la température et l'AH entraînent des erreurs dans les signaux RCS prétraités jusqu'à 9 %, puis dans les coefficients de rétrodiffusion et d'extinction des particules jusqu'à 2,2 % et 25 %, respectivement.

The solution of the lidar equation is an ill-posed problem that requires nonlinear methods to retrieve the atmospheric aerosol optical and microphysical properties. Particularly, in the last decades, the most applied solution for the elastic lidars is through the well known Klett-Fernald-Sasano algorithm for retrieving the backscatter coefficient. To solve this inversion problem, we propose to apply the optimal estimation method to a Vaisala CL51 ceilometer range corrected signals for retrieving under two different frameworks, the particle backscatter coefficient or the ratio and the lidar constant. The optimal estimation is a Bayesian inversion fed by a set of a priori information. In this work, to obtain the suitable prior, we have tested two approaches that involved measurements and synthetic data. The first data set was obtained from previous inversions using the classical Klett-Fernald-Sasano method, and the second one by using Mie simulations fed by aerosol properties from OPAC database. The optimal estimation method used for elastic lidar inversion presents two main advantages compared to the classic approaches. On one hand, there is no need for Rayleigh zone determination and on the other hand, the uncertainty of the retrieved products is directly estimated, therefore the quality of the results is highly dependant on the prior selection. To evaluate the performance of the model, low and high aerosol accumulations scenarios were considered, finding that the backscatter coefficient was oscillating between 5 and 7 (kmsr)−1 in the first 3 km agl with uncertainties lower than 27 % at degraded spatial resolutions. Additionally, constant and height-dependent priors were tested reaching relative errors in percentage up to 5 % between them. Besides, relative errors were also analyzed for the prior covariance matrices estimated either from synthetic lidar data and Klett's retrievals, where the errors are lower than 2 % by using one instead of the another. However, scale factors were applied to the synthetic prior covariance matrices to reach the convergence. The results at retrieving the particle backscattering were compared to those ones estimated from Klett's inversion, considering Klett inversion as the reference. For the extreme scenario of inversions, considering aerosol accumulations at different layers, the bias between the optimized profiles was lower than −0.5 (kmsr)−1 in the first 0.5 km and 0.5 (kmsr)−1 above 1.5 km. Here, we also shown a two-parameter optimization for the lidar constant and lidar ratio, applied to 39 aerosol inversions, finding relative errors lower than 1 % and 2.3 % , respectively, considering those ones from Klett inversion as the reference.

In this paper we extract the aerosol microphysical properties for a collection of mineral dust cases measured by multi-wavelength depolarization Raman lidar systems located at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA, Athens, Greece) and the Andalusian Institute for Earth System Research (IISTA-CEAMA, Granada, Spain). The lidar-based retrievals were carried out with the Spheroidal Inversion eXperiments software tool (SphInX) developed at the University of Potsdam (Germany). The software uses regularized inversion of a two-dimensional enhancement of the Mie model based on the spheroid-particle approximation with the aspect ratio determining the particle shape. The selection of the cases was based on the transport time from the source regions to the measuring sites. The aerosol optical depth as measured by AERONET ranged from 0.27 to 0.54 (at 500 nm) depending on the intensity of each event. Our analysis showed the hourly mean particle linear depolarization ratio and particle lidar ratio values at 532 nm ranging from 11 to 34% and from 42 to 79 sr respectively, depending on the mixing status, the corresponding air mass pathways and their transport time. Cases with shorter transport time showed good agreement in terms of the optical and SphInX-retrieved microphysical properties between Athens and Granada providing a complex refractive index value equal to 1.4 + 0.004i. On the other hand, the results for cases with higher transport time deviated from the aforementioned ones as well as from each other, providing, in particular, an imaginary part of the refractive index ranging from 0.002 to 0.005. Reconstructions of two-dimensional shape-size distributions for each selected layer showed that the dominant effective particle shape was prolate with diverse spherical contributions. The retrieved volume concentrations reflect overall the intensity of the episodes., Spanish Ministry of Sciences, Innovation and Universities through project CGL2016-81092, Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports through grant FPU14/03684

The research leading to these results has received funding from the H2020 program from the European Union (grant agreement no. 654109, 778349) and also from the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Economy and Competitiviness (MINECO, ref. CGL2013-45410-R, CGL2016-81092-R, CGL2017-85344-R, TEC2015-63832-P), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (ref. CGL2017-90884-REDT); the CommSensLab "Maria de Maeztu" Unity of Excellence (ref. MDM-2016-0600) financed by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación. Co-funding was also provided by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ref. POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007690, ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-000004, ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-000011); by the Andalusia Regional Government (ref. P12-RNM-2409); by the Madrid Regional Government (projects TIGAS-CM, ref. Y2018/EMT-5177 and AIRTEC-CM, ref. P2018/EMT4329); by the University of Granada through “Plan Propio. Programa 9 Convocatoria 2013” and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and national funding (ref. SFRH/BSAB/143164/2019). The BSC-DREAM8b and NNMB/BSC-Dust (now NMMB-MONARCH) model simulations were performed by the Mare Nostrum supercomputer hosted by the Barcelona Supercomputer Center (BSC). S. Basart acknowledges the AXA Research Fund for supporting aerosol research at the BSC through the AXA Chair on Sand and Dust Storms Fund, as well as the InDust project (COST Action CA16202). The authors gratefully acknowledge the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT transport and dispersion model and/or READY website (http://www.ready.noaa.gov) used in this publication., An unprecedented extreme Saharan dust event was registered in winter time from 20 to 23 February 2017 over the Iberian Peninsula (IP). We report on aerosol optical properties observed under this extreme dust intrusion through passive and active remote sensing techniques. For that, AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) and EARLINET (European Aerosol Research LIdar NETwork) databases are used. The sites considered are: Barcelona (41.38°N, 2.17°E), Burjassot (39.51°N, 0.42°W), Cabo da Roca (38.78°N, 9.50°W), Évora (38.57°N, 7.91°W), Granada (37.16°N, 3.61°W) and Madrid (40.45°N, 3.72°W). Large aerosol optical depths (AOD) and low Ångström exponents (AE) are observed. An AOD of 2.0 at 675 nm is reached in several stations. A maximum peak of 2.5 is registered in Évora. During and around the peak of AOD, AEs close to 0 and even slightly negative are measured. With regard to vertically-resolved aerosol optical properties, particle backscatter coefficients as high as 15 Mm−1 sr−1 at 355 nm are recorded at the lidar stations. Layer-mean lidar ratios are found in the range 40–55 sr at 355 nm and 34–61 sr at 532 nm during the event. The particle depolarization ratios are found to be constant inside the dust layer, and consistent from one site to another. Layer-mean values vary in the range 0.19–0.31. Another remarkable aspect of the event is the limited vertical distribution of the dust plume which never exceeds 5 km. The extreme aspect of the event also presented a nice case for testing the ability of two dust forecast models, BSC-DREAM8b and NMMB/BSC-Dust, to reproduce the arrival, the vertical distribution and the intensity of the dust plume over a long-range transport region. In the particular case of the February 2017 dust event, we found a large underestimation in the forecast of the extinction coefficient provided by BSC-DREAM8b at all heights independently of the site. In contrast NMMB/BSC-Dust forecasts presented a better agreement with the observations, especially in southwestern part of the IP. With regard to the forecast skill as a function of lead time, no clear degradation of the prognostic is appreciated at 24, 48 and 72 h for Évora and Granada stations (South). However the prognostic does degrade (bias increases and/or correlation decreases) for Barcelona (North), which is attributed to the fact that Barcelona is at a greater distance from the source region and to the singularity of the event., Funding from the H2020 program from the European Union (grant agreement no. 654109, 778349), Spanish Ministry of Industry, Economy and Competitiviness (MINECO, ref. CGL2013-45410-R, CGL2016-81092-R, CGL2017-85344-R, TEC2015-63832-P), Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (ref. CGL2017-90884-REDT), CommSensLab "Maria de Maeztu" Unity of Excellence (ref. MDM-2016-0600) financed by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Co-funding was also provided by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ref. POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007690, ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-000004, ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-000011), Andalusia Regional Government (ref. P12-RNM-2409); by the Madrid Regional Government (projects TIGAS-CM, ref. Y2018/EMT-5177 and AIRTEC-CM, ref. P2018/EMT4329), Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and national funding (ref. SFRH/BSAB/143164/2019)

The AEAOD– ΔAEAOD grid proposed by Gobbi et al. (2007) is a graphical method used to visually represent the spectral characterization of aerosol optical depth (AOD), i.e. Angström exponent (AE) and its curvature, in order to infer the fine mode contribution (η) to the total AOD and the size of the fine mode aerosol particles. Perrone et al. (2014) applied this method for the wavelengths widely used in lidar measurements. However, in neither case does the method allow for a direct relationship between η and the fine mode fraction contribution to the total aerosol population. Some discussions are made regarding the effect of shape and composition to the classical AE-ΔAE plot. The potential use of particle backscatter measurements, widely used in aerosol characterization methods together with extinction measurements, is also discussed in the AE-ΔAE grid context. A modification is proposed that yields the submicron contribution to the total volume concentration by using particle extinction data, and a comparison to experimental measurements is made. Our results indicate that the use of a modified AE-ΔAE grid plot to directly obtain submicrometric and micrometric mode fraction to the total aerosol population is feasible if a volume-based bimodal particle size distribution is used instead of a number-based one., Andalusia Regional Government through project P12-RNM-2409, Spanish Ministry of Sciences, Innovation and Universities (CGL2016-81092 and CGL2017 -90884 - REDT)

An unprecedented extreme Saharan dust event was registered in winter time from 20 to 23 February 2017 over the Iberian Peninsula (IP). We report on aerosol optical properties observed under this extreme dust outbreak through remote sensing (active and passive) techniques. For that, EARLINET (European Aerosol Research LIdar NETwork) lidar and AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) Sun-photometer Cimel CE 318 measurements are used. The sites considered are: Barcelona (41.38º N, 2.17º E), Burjassot (39.51º N, 0.42º W), Cabo da Roca (38.78º N, 9.50º W), Évora (38.57º N, 7.91º W), Granada (37.16º N, 3.61º W) and Madrid (40.45º N, 3.72º W). In general, large aerosol optical depths (AOD) and low Ångström exponents (AE) are observed. An AOD of 2.0 at 675 nm is reached in several stations. Maximum values of AOD675 of 2.5 are registered in Évora. During and around the peak of AOD675, AEs close to 0 are measured. With regard to vertically-resolved aerosol optical properties, particle backscatter coefficients as high as 1.5∙10−5 m−1 sr−1 at 355 nm are recorded at every lidar stations. Mean lidar ratios are found in the range 40–55 sr at 355 nm and 34–61 sr at 532 nm during the event inside the dust layer. Mean particle and volume depolarization ratios are found to be very consistent between lidar stations. They range 0.19–0.31 and 0.12–0.26 respectively. The optical properties are also found very stable with height in the dust layer. Another remarkable aspect of the event is the limited height of the dust transport which is found between the ground and 5 km. Our vertically-resolved aerosol properties are also used to estimate the performances of two dust models, namely BSC-DREAM8b and NMMB/BSC-Dust, in order to evaluate their forecast skills in such intense dust outbreaks. We found that forecasts provided by the NMMB/BSC-Dust show a better agreement with observations than the ones from BSC-DREAM8b. The BSC-DREAM8b forecasts (24 h) present a large underestimation during the event. No clear degradation of the prognostics is appreciated in 24, 48, 72 h except for the Barcelona station.

The Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) is the lowermost region of troposphere and endowed with turbulent characteristics, which can have mechanical or thermodynamic origins. Such behavior gives to this layer great importance, mainly in studies about pollutant dispersion and weather forecasting. However, the instruments usually applied in studies about turbulence in the PBL have limitations in spatial resolution (anemometer towers) or temporal resolution (aircrafts). In this study we propose the synergetic use of remote sensing systems (microwave radiometer [MWR], Doppler lidar [DL] and elastic lidar [EL]) to analyze the PBL behavior. Furthermore, we show how some meteorological variables such as air temperature, aerosol number density, vertical wind, relative humidity and net radiation might influence the PBL dynamic. The statistical moments of the high frequency distributions of the vertical velocity, derived from DL and of the backscattered coefficient derived from EL, are corrected by two methodologies, namely first lag and −2/3 correction. The corrected profiles present small differences when compare against the uncorrected profiles, showing low influence of noise and the viability of the proposed methodology. Two case studies were analyzed in detail, one corresponding to a well-defined PBL and another one corresponding to a situation with presence of a Saharan dust lofted aerosol layer and clouds. In both cases the results provided by the different instruments are complementary, thus the synergistic use of the different systems allow us performing a detailed monitoring of the PBL.