Multi-wavelength Depolarization and Raman lidar and High Spectral Resolution Lidar setup and modelization at the Argentinean Aerosol Monitoring Stations

RISTORI P; OTERO L; GONZALEZ F; DWORNICZAK, J. C.; VILAR O; PAPANDREA S; YOSHITAKA J; SUGIMOTO N; QUEL E

Workshop; VIII Workshop on Lidar Measurements in Latin America; 2015

The Argentinean Aerosol Monitoring Network Project in which several lidars for aerosol research were installed, started on February 2012. The grant MD31554/11 provided by the Ministry of Defense gave the opportunity to design, build and transport these systems to their final locations. Since their operation they have been providing valuable information about the presence of volcanic ashes, dust and other kind of aerosols to the civil aviation while being operated by the National Weather Service. The stations are composed by a multi-wavelength lidar and several aerosol-monitoring instruments as sun-photometers, nephelometers and radiometers, and they have been growing in number reaching 5 stations in 2014. These stations are placed at the main international airports in Patagonia and in Buenos Aires. In addition to these stations high spectral resolution lidars are being designed in close collaboration with the National Institute for Environmental Studies from Japan which is related to CEILAP and Universidad de Magallanes, Chile by the first tri-national research program of Japan of ?Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development? (SATREPS). This work describes the lidar instrumentation, models the behavior of the optical design in normal operating conditions but also studies the effects of any possible misalignments of the units. Finally it also shows how the effects of these misalignments affect the lidar observations and the results of the proposed tests requested in the frame of the system validation of the Latinoamerican Lidar Network.