Recent advances on the creation of an aerosol monitoring network to identify volcanic ash transport in Argentina and Chile using lidars in the frame of a SATREPS collaboration

LIDIA ANA OTERO; PABLO ROBERTO RISTORI; SEBASTIAN PAPANDREA; ATSUSHI SHIMIZU; YOSHITAKA JIN; AKIRA MIZUNO; EDUARDO QUEL; NOBUO SUGIMOTO

New Delhi

Simposio; 10th SPIE Asia-Pacific Remote Sensing Symposium. SPIE 2016; 2016; 2016

Afterinstalling the fifth lidar station on February 2015 in Argentina financed bythe Ministry of the Defense to mitigate the problems generated by the presenceof volcanic ash in the region, there are still many challenges remaining forthis aerosol monitoring network. A tri-national collaboration(Japan-Chile-Argentina), part Science and Technology Partnership forSustainable Development (SATREPS) programme, focused on the ?Development of theSocial Management System for Atmospheric Environmental Risks in South America?intends to bring solutions to these challenges. In first place it will upgradethe lidars to add depolarization capabilities to better identify the kind ofaerosol suspended in the atmosphere. In second place it intends to expand itsobserving domain actually confined to the Patagonic region to the north andsouth of Argentina and Chile adding new lidars. In third place it will providestate of the art technology adding a high spectral resolution channel to someof these lidars. The collaboration is also working on building the protocolsfor system operation and maintenance, data analysis and interpretation incollaboration with the Weather Services in Argentina and Chile in order toachieve an effective and continuous observation.