Lidar measurements of Saharan dust transportation over Sofia

Within the framework of the project "EARLINET-ASOS (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network - Advanced Sustainable Observation System)" Contract No 025991 of European Commission's Framework Program 6 (EC FP6) (http://www.earlinet.org), transportation of Saharan dust over Europe has been observed in the sky over Sofia, during the last week of May, 2008. This phenomena, predicted by the Atmospheric Modeling and Weather Forecasting Group of National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) (http://forecast.uoa.gr/) and the Forecast system of Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) (http://www.bsc.es/projects/ earthscience/DREAM), was interesting with its relatively long-time existence and large scale of propagation over the continent. In this work, we present the results and some comments of the measurements of the atmospheric backscatter coefficient made in Sofia, using aerosol lidar with CuBrvapor laser.