Aerosols affect life on earth in several ways. They play an important role in the climate system; the effect of aerosols on the global climate system is one of the major uncertainties of present climate predictions. They play a major role in atmospheric chemistry and hence affect the concentrations of other potentially harmful atmospheric constituents, e.g. ozone. They are an important controlling factor for the radiation budget, in particular in the UV-B part of the spectrum. At ground level, they can be harmful, even toxic, to man, animals, and plants. Because of these adverse effects that aerosols can have on human life, it is necessary to achieve an advanced understanding of the processes that generate, redistribute, and remove aerosols in the atmosphere. A quantitative dataset describing the aerosol vertical, horizontal, and temporal distribution, including its variability on a continental scale, is necessary. The dataset is used to validate and improve models that predict the future state of the atmosphere and its dependence on different scenarios describing economic development, including those actions taken to preserve the quality of the environment. The EARLINET data set is the most comprehensive compilation of data available for this purpose.
EARLINET will continue to build a quantitative comprehensive statistical database of the horizontal, vertical, and temporal distribution of aerosols on a continental scale. The goal is to provide aerosol data with unbiased sampling, for important selected processes, and air-mass history, together with comprehensive analyses of these data.
The objectives will be reached by operating a network of presently 15 stations distributed over most of Europe, using advanced quantitative laser remote sensing to directly measure the vertical distribution of aerosols, supported by a suite of more conventional observations. Special care is taken to assure data quality, including intercomparisons at instrument and evaluation levels. A major part of the measurements is performed according to a fixed schedule to provide an unbiased statistically significant data set. Additional measurements are performed to specifically address important processes that are localised either in space or time. Back-trajectories derived from operational weather prediction models are used to characterise the history of the observed air parcels, accounting explicitly for the vertical distribution.
| Thomas Trickl | Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, IMK-IFU, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany |
| Jens Bösenberg | Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg, Germany (Speaker of the council) |
| Dimitris Balis | Aristotleleo Panepistimio Thessalonikis, Greece (Council member) |
| Adolfo Comeron | Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain (Council member) |
| Gelsomina Pappalardo | Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Metodologie per l'Analisi Ambientale, Potenza, Italy (Council member) |
| Matthias Wiegner | Meteorologisches Institut der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany (Council member) |
| Albert Ansmann | Leibniz-Institut für Troposphärenforschung, Leipzig, Germany |
| Arnoud Apituley | National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands |
| Lucas Alados Arboledas | Grupo de Fisica de la Atmósfera, Departamento de Fisica Aplicada, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain |
| Christine Böckmann | Zentrum für Dynamik komplexer Systeme, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany |
| Anatoli Chaikovsky | Institute of Physics National Academy of Sciences, Minsk, Bjelarus |
| Ove Gustafsson | Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), Linköping, Sweden |
| Georg Hansen | Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Tromsö, Norway |
| Valentin Mitev | Observatory of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland |
| Doina Nicolae | INOE National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics, Bucharest, Romania |
| Alexandros Papayannis | Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechnion Athinon, Athens, Greece |
| Maria Rita Perrone | University of Lecce, Italy |
| Manuel Pujadas | CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain |
| Jean-Philippe Putaud | JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Ispra, Italy |
| Francois Ravetta | Institute Pierre Simon Laplace, Paris, France |
| Vincenzo Rizi | Universita degli Studi L´Aquila, Italy |
| Valentin Simeonov | Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Aleksander Pietruczuk | Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Belsk, Poland |
| Nicola Spinelli | Instituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, Napoli, Italy |
| Dimitar V. Stoyanov | Institute of Electronics, BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria |
Please contact Dimitris Balis for updates or request of changes.
Recommended guidelines for data use and publication:
Using EARLINET data:
Please consult with the PI(s) of the data to be used:
Publishing EARLINET data:
Please consider authorship for the PI(s):
When data from the EARLINET Database are used in a publication, we request the following acknowledgment to be included:
"The authors acknowledge EARLINET for providing aerosol lidar profiles available at http://data.earlinet.org/"
EARLINET requests a reprint of any published papers or reports or a brief description of other uses (e.g., posters, oral presentations, etc.) of data downloaded from the EARLINET database. This will help us determine the use of EARLINET data, which is helpful in optimizing product development. It also helps us to keep our product-related references current.
Please contact Gelsomina Pappalardo for instructions.