Background


An accurate description of the atmospheric aerosols is needed in order to address its role in the Earth radiative balance and consequently its effect on global warming. The uncertainty on the radiative forcing due to suspended particulate matter is indeed large in magnitude if compared to the understanding of radiative forcing due to greenhouses gases such as CO2 and it is the dominant contributor to overall net Industrial Era forcing uncertainty (IPCC, 2023).

Compared to greenhouse gases, a great deal of these uncertainties is stemmed from the spatial and temporal inhomogeneities of the aerosols properties. This variability is mainly related to their short average life and the heterogeneous distribution of sources and their strengths, but also to complex interactions with the atmosphere and the sun radiation.

With the purpose of reducing uncertainty on aerosol characterization, several networks based on passive remote sensing techniques,using the sun as source, have been established worldwide, such as:


AERONET
PHOTONS
RIMA
SKYNET
WMO-GAW

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) guidelines, only data provided by international networks should be used in aerosol climatology studies. These networks provide a well tracked calibration procedure, good quality standards and homogeneity on the retrievals. However many sun-sky radiometers are working out from federated network, in small independent and local networks, or even standalone. This situation implies that a large amount of data is not made available, it is difficult to reach, or it has not the quality status and homogeneity from the well established international networks. On the end the data cannot be properly used for regional climatology studies.

Objectives

Following the above remarks

Objectives of ESR are:

  • ESR is one of the Regional subnetworks of SKYNET with a regional data center located by ISAC-CNR, Italy. Its first objective is producing new research products, using also algorithms regionally developed. ESR also collects data from the European users and send them to the SKYNET International Data Center.

  • ESR provides open source algorithms for data analysis with the aim of encouraging the development of new ideas in this field research, and pursuing the improvement of current procedures

  • ESR performs studies of overlapping among already existing federated network and promoting synergy with them

  • ESR Promotes the cooperation and discussion in Europe, but not only, among scientists concerned with studies of aerosol remote sensing.

Reference

  • IPCC, 2023: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 35-115, doi: 10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647.

    • - AERONET

  • B.N. Holben, T.F. Eck, I. Slutsker, J.P. Buis, A. Setzer, E. Vermote, J.A. Reagan, Y. Kaufman, T. Nakajima, F. Lavenu and A. Smirnov, AERONET - A federated instrument network and data archive for aerosol characterization. Remote Sens. Environ., vol.66, No.1, pp.1-16, 1998.

  • O. Dubovik, B.N. Holben, T. Lapyonok, A. Sinyuk, M.I. Mischenko, P. Yang and I. Slutsker, Non-spherical aerosol retrieval method employing light scattering by spheroids. Geophys. Res. Lett., vol.104, D24, pp.31333-31349, 2002.

  • O. Dubovik and M.D. King. A flexible inversion algorithm for retrieval of aerosol optical properties from sun and sky radiance measurements. J. Geophys. Res., vol.105, D16, pp.20673-20696, 2000.

    • - SKYNET

  • Nakajima, T., Campanelli, M., Che, H., Estellés, V., Irie, H., Kim, S.-W., Kim, J., Liu, D., Nishizawa, T., Pandithurai, G., Soni, V. K., Thana, B., Tugjsurn, N.-U., Aoki, K., Go, S., Hashimoto, M., Higurashi, A., Kazadzis, S., Khatri, P., Kouremeti, N., Kudo, R., Marenco, F., Momoi, M., Ningombam, S. S., Ryder, C. L., Uchiyama, A., and Yamazaki, A.: An overview of and issues with sky radiometer technology and SKYNET, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 4195–4218, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-4195-2020, 2020.

  • T. Nakajima, M. Tanaka and T. Yamauchi. Retrieval of the optical properties of aerosols from the aureole and extinction data. App. Opt. No.22, pp.2951-2959, 1983.

  • T. Nakajima, G. Tonna, R. Rao, P. Boi, Y. Kaufman and B. Holben. Use of sky brightness measurements from ground for remote sensing of particulate polydispersions. App. Opt. vol.35,No.15, pp.2672-2686, 1996.

  • M.Campanelli, V.Estelles, T.Smyth, C.Tomasi, M.P.Martìnez-Lozano, B.Claxton, P.Muller, G.Pappalardo, A.Pietruczuk, J.Shanklin, S.Colwell, C.Wrench, A.Lupi, M.Mazzola, C.Lanconelli, V.Vitale, F.Congeduti, D.Dionisi, M.Cacciani. Monitoring of Eyjafjallajoekull volcanic aerosol by the new European SkyRad users(ESR) sun-sky radiometer network,Atmospheric Environment, Vol.48, pp. 33-45, 2012.

    • - WMO-GAW

  • Wehrli, C.: GAWPFR: A network of aerosol optical depth observations with precision filter radiometers, GLOBAL ATMOSPHERE WATCH, p. 36, 2005

  • Kazadzis, S., Kouremeti, N., Nyeki, S., Gröbner, J., and Wehrli, C.: The World Optical Depth Research and Calibration Center (WORCC) quality assurance and quality control of GAW-PFR AOD measurements, Geosci. Instrum. Method. Data Syst., 7, 39–53, https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-7-39-2018, 2018.

  • Nyeki, S., Wehrli, C., Gröbner, J., Kouremeti, N., Wacker, S., Labuschagne, C., Mbatha, N., and Brunke, E. G. The GAW-PFR aerosol optical depth network: The 2008–2013 time series at Cape Point Station, South Africa, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 120, 5070–5084, 2015.


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