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Aerosols are key players in the Earth's climate system with mineral dust being one major component of the atmospheric aerosol load. While former campaigns focused on investigating the properties and effects of rather pure mineral dust layers, the A-LIFE (A bsorbing aerosol layers in a changing climate: aging, life time and dynamics) campaign in April 2017 aimed to characterize dust in complex aerosol mixtures. In this study we present ground-based lidar measurements that were performed at Limassol, Cyprus, in April 2017. During our measurement period, the measurement site was affected by complex mixtures of dust from different sources and pollution aerosols from local sources as well as long-range transported. We found mean values of the particle linear depolarization ratio and extinction-to-backscatter ratio (lidar ratio) of 0.27 ± 0.02 and 41 sr ± 5 sr at 355 nm and of 0.30 ± 0.02 and 39 sr ± 5 sr at 532 nm for Arabian dust, and of 0.27 ± 0.02 and 55 sr ± 8 sr at 355 nm and of 0.28 ± 0.02 and 53 sr ± 7 sr at 532 nm for Saharan dust. The values found for pollution aerosols of the particle linear depolarization ratio and the lidar ratio are 0.05 ± 0.02 at 355 nm and 0.04 ± 0.02 at 532 nm, and 65 sr ± 12 sr at 355 nm and 60 sr ± 16 sr at 532 nm, respectively. We use our measurements for aerosol typing and compare that to aerosol typing from sun photometer data, in-situ measurements and trajectory analysis. The different methods agree well for the derived aerosol type, but looking at the derived dust mass concentration from different methods, the trajectory analysis frequently underestimate high dust concentration that were found in major mineral dust events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the preliminary design of a polarization lidar system for detecting oriented dust particles. The system emits linearly- and circularly-polarized light from two lasers and detects the backscattered light, using two telescopes. The emitted light by each laser is detected from both telescopes alternatively, providing in this way two times the signals recorded by a conventional system. The system has also the capability of performing measurements at different zenith angles. Its detection strategy is based on scattering calculations for mixtures of oriented and randomly-oriented dust particles in different atmospheric scenarios.

The accuracy of the polarisation calibration is of prime importance for aerosol classification using lidars. We present a detailed description how to obtain the calibration parameters introduced in 2016 [1] accounting for various effects of non-ideal optics, lasers and atmospheric conditions. We find that crucial parameters such as the rotation angle of the plane of polarisation of the Laser (RotL) as well as the degree of linear polarisation (DOLP) influence the volume linear depolarisation ratio significantly.

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.

An analytical framework, based on the Müller-Stokes formalism, is presented, which enables us to determine the impact of polarisation effects of the lidar optics on the lidar signals and on the measured atmospheric linear depolarisation. Furthermore, the equations enable us to investigate the accuracy of the gain ratio calibration of depolarisation channels with different calibration setups, to correct some of the polarisation effects, and to perform uncertainty analyses.

L’Aquila (Italy) lidar station is part of the EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network) since its beginning in the 2000. In the EARLINET community great efforts are devoted to the quality-assurance of the aerosol optical properties inserted in the database. To this end, each lidar station performed intercomparisons with reference instruments, a series of internal hardware checks in order to assess the quality of their instruments and exercises to test the algorithms used to retrieve the aerosol optical parameters. In this paper we give an overview of our experience within EARLINET qualityassurance (QA) program, which was adopted for the Raman lidar (RL) operated in the AUGER Observatory. This program could be systematically adopted for the lidar systems needed for the current and upcoming UHECR experiments, like CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array).

Signals of many types of aerosol lidars can be affected with a significant systematic error, if depolarizing scatterers are present in the atmosphere. That error is caused by a polarization-dependent receiver transmission. In this contribution we present an estimation of the magnitude of this systematic error. We show that lidar signals can be biased by more than 20%, if linearly polarized laser light is emitted, if both polarization components of the backscattered light are measured with a single detection channel, and if the receiver transmissions for these two polarization components differ by more than 50%. This signal bias increases with increasing ratio between the two transmission values (transmission ratio) or with the volume depolarization ratio of the scatterers. The resulting error of the particle backscatter coefficient increases with decreasing backscatter ratio. If the particle backscatter coefficients are to have an accuracy better than 5%, the transmission ratio has to be in the range between 0.85 and 1.15. We present a method to correct the measured signals for this bias. We demonstrate an experimental method for the determination of the transmission ratio. We use collocated measurements of a lidar system strongly affected by this signal bias and an unbiased reference system to verify the applicability of the correction scheme. The errors in the case of no correction are illustrated with example measurements of fresh Saharan dust. OCIS codes: 280.3640, 280.1100.

This paper presents the newly established Lidar Calibration Centre, a distributed infrastructure in Europe, whose goal is to offer services for complete characterization and calibration of lidars and ceilometers. Mobile reference lidars, laboratories for testing and characterization of optics and electronics, facilities for inspection and debugging of instruments, as well as for training in good practices are open to users from the scientific community, operational services and private sector. The Lidar Calibration Centre offers support for trans-national access through the EC HORIZON2020 project ACTRIS-2.

A ground-based polarization Raman lidar is presented, that is able to measure the depolarization ratio at three wavelengths (355, 532 and 1064 nm) simultaneously. This new feature is implemented for the first time in a Raman lidar. It provides a full dataset of 3 backscatter coefficients, two extinction coefficients and 3 depolarization ratios (3+2+3 lidar system). To ensure the data quality, it has been compared to the well characterized two-wavelength polarization lidar POLIS. Measurements of long-range transported dust have been performed in the framework of the Saharan Aerosol Long-Range Transport and Aerosol-Cloud-Interaction Experiment (SALTRACE) in the Caribbean.

We study the benefit of considering sun-/skyphotometer measurements in a microphysical lidar retrieval. Furthermore, to assess the importance of the aerosol model employed by the retrieval, we compare results obtained using a spheroid aerosol model with results using an advanced aerosol model that considers irregular particle shapes. Preliminary results are shown for the massextinction conversion factor and the single scattering albedo during a measurement case of long-range-transported volcanic ash.

Linear depolarization ratios in clean air ranges were measured with POLIS-6 at 355 and 532 nm. The mean deviation from the theoretical values, including the rotational Raman lines within the filter bandwidths, amounts to 0.0005 at 355 nm and to 0.0012 at 532 nm. The mean uncertainty of the measured linear depolarization ratio of clean air is about 0.0005 at 355 nm and about 0.0006 at 532 nm.

In the framework of the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network to Establish an Aerosol Climatology (EARLINET), 19 aerosol lidar systems from 11 European countries were compared. Aerosol extinction or backscatter coefficient profiles were measured by at least two systems for each comparison. Aerosol extinction coefficients were derived from Raman lidar measurements in the UV (351 or 355 nm), and aerosol backscatter profiles were calculated from pure elastic backscatter measurements at 351 or 355, 532, or 1064 nm. The results were compared for height ranges with high and low aerosol content. Some systems were additionally compared with sunphotometers and starphotometers. Predefined maximum deviations were used for quality control of the results. Lidar systems with results outside those limits could not meet the quality assurance criterion. The algorithms for deriving aerosol backscatter profiles from elastic lidar measurements were tested separately, and the results are described in Part 2 of this series of papers [Appl. Opt. 43, 977-989 (2004)]. In the end, all systems were quality assured, although some had to be modified to improve their performance. Typical deviations between aerosol backscatter profiles were 10% in the planetary boundary layer and 0.1 X [10.sup.-6] [m.sup.-1] [sr.sup.-1] in the free troposphere. OCIS codes: 280.1100, 280.3640, 290.1350, 290.2200, 290.5860.

The eVe dual-laser/dual-telescope lidar system is briefly given here, focusing on the optical and mechanical parts of system's emission and receiver units. The compact design of linear/circular emission unit along with the linear/circular analyser in the receiver unit, allows eVe to simultaneously reproduce the operation of the ALADIN lidar on board Aeolus as well as the operation of a traditional ground-based polarisation lidar system with linear emission. As such, eVe lidar aims to provide: (a) ground reference measurements for the validation of the Aeolus L2A aerosol products, and (b) the atmospheric conditions for which linear polarisation lidar systems can be considered for Aeolus L2A validation, by identifying any possible biases arisen from the different polarisation state in the emission between ALADIN and these systems, and the detection of only the co-polar component of the returned signal from ALADIN for the L2A products retrieval. In addition, a brief description is given concerning the polarisation calibration techniques that are applied in the system, as well as the developed software for the analysis of the collected signals and the retrieval of the optical products. More specifically, the system's dual configuration enables the retrieval of the optical properties of particle backscatter and extinction coefficients originating from the two different polarisation states of the emission, the linear and circular depolarisation ratios, as well as the direct calculation of the Aeolus like backscatter coefficient, i.e., the backscatter coefficient that Aeolus would measure from ground. Two cases, one with slightly-depolarising particles and one with moderately-depolarising particles, were selected from the first conducted measurements of eVe in Athens, in order to give a glimpse of the system's capabilities. In the slightly depolarising scene, the Aeolus like backscatter coefficient agrees well with the actual backscatter coefficient, which is also true when non-depolarising particles are present. The agreement however fades out for strongly depolarising scenes, where an underestimation of ~17 % of the Aeolus like backscatter coefficient is observed when moderately-depolarising particles are probed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]