ANALYSIS OF A SAHARAN DUST PLUME OVER CLUJ-NAPOCA, ROMANIA, USING REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES.

At the present state, the LIDAR systems have different configurations and geometries, according to their applications. The multi-wavelength Raman and depolarization LIDAR systems used in the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network – EARLINET are suitable to provide an extended set of optical parameters for aerosol characterization which can be used in climatology studies, models and different events like Saharan dust outbreaks, transport of smoke plumes or volcanic ash. The aerosol in the atmosphere is present most often in the form of a mixture of aerosols from different sources. In Cluj-Napoca area, the aerosol can have a local origin with an anthropogenic source, or it can be subjected to long range transport. For example, the mineral dust arriving over Romania originates mainly in the Saharan desert and the Middle East; biomass burning aerosol has a local or a regional source, originating mainly from Eastern Europe and the Balkans; volcanic ash intrusions are rare, but can happen during volcanic eruptions such as the previously eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull and Grímsvötn volcanoes in Iceland. In this article we present an intrusion of Saharan dust above the city of Cluj-Napoca, identified with the LIDAR system and the solar photometer from the Faculty of Environmental Science and Engineering, Babeş Bolyai University. The results indicate the presence of Saharan dust intrusion over Cluj-Napoca as evidence shown by aerosol optical properties derived from AERONET Direct Sun data at CLUJ_UBB site measured with the sunphotometer. The findings were consistent with the HYSPLIT back-trajectories model and the BSC DREAM model simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]