ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-11-175-2011 Seasonal variability of aerosol optical properties observed by means of a Raman lidar at an EARLINET site over Northeastern Spain Sicard M. 1 Rocadenbosch F. 1 Reba M. N. M. 1 Comerón A. 2 Tomás S. 1 García-Vízcaino D. 2 Batet O. 2 Barrios R. 2 Kumar D. 2 Baldasano J. M. 3 4 Dept. of Signal Theory and Communications, Remote Sensing Lab., Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya/Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Dept. of Signal Theory and Communications, Remote Sensing Lab., Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain Environmental Modeling Laboratory, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain 11 01 2011 11 1 175 190 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/175/2011/acp-11-175-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/175/2011/acp-11-175-2011.pdf

The annual and seasonal variability of aerosol optical properties observed by means of a Raman lidar over Northeastern Spain has been assessed. The lidar representativeness has first been checked against sun-photometer measurements in terms of aerosol optical thickness. Then the annual cycle and the seasonal variability of the planetary boundary layer aerosol optical thickness and its fraction compared to the columnar optical thickness, the lidar ratio, the backscatter-related Ångström exponent and the planetary boundary layer height are analyzed and discussed. Winter and summer mean profiles of extinction, backscatter and lidar ratio retrieved with the Raman algorithm are presented. The analysis shows the impact of most of the natural events (Saharan dust intrusions, wildfires, etc.) and meteorological situations (summer anticyclonic situation, the formation of the Iberian thermal low, winter long-range transport from North Europe and/or North America, re-circulation flows, etc.) occurring in the Barcelona area. A detailed study of a special event including a combined intrusion of Saharan dust and biomass-burning particles proves the suitability of combining the retrieval of aerosol optical properties from Raman and pure elastic lidar measurements to discriminate spatially different types of aerosols and to follow their spatial and temporal evolution.

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