Dust Plumes in Patagonia Argentina Detected by Comodoro Rivadavia Stations on February 20th, 2016

LIDIA ANA OTERO; YOSHITAKA JIN; CARINA BOLZI; PABLO ROBERTO RISTORI; DANIEL AGUIRRE; JUAN PALLOTTA; NOBUO SUGIMOTO; DIANA MARIANA RODRIGUEZ; EDUARDO QUEL

Santos

Workshop; IX Workshop on Lidar Measurements in Latin America; 2016

On February 20, 2016 westerly winds blew dust plumes far away from theirsource from the southern Patagonia, Argentina to the Atlantic Ocean. Thisevent, which is very common over this region, was observed by an air monitoringstation installed at the National Meteorological Service station placed at ComodoroRivadavia international airport (45o 47? 31?? S; 67o 27?46?? W). This station is part of an air monitoring network designed and builtto detect the presence of aerosols, volcanic ash, mineral dust and biomassburning in Argentina. The network was created by means of a special projectfrom the Ministry of Defense to assess aerial navigation during volcaniceruptions and reinforced by a SATREPS (JICA-JST) tri-national project involvingJapan, Chile and Argentina. This work studies dust cloud optical and microphysicalproperties by means of lidar measurements and satellite data.