Daytime aerosol extinction profiles from the combination of CALIOP profiles and AERONET products

Abstract. The solar background illumination has a strong effect on CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) measurements, leading to a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio of the lidar signal. Because of this, CALIOP level 2 data algorithms might be limited in the retrieval of the properties of the aerosols in the atmosphere. In this work, we present a methodology that combines CALIOP level 1 data with AERONET (Aerosol RObotic NETwork) measurements to retrieve aerosol extinction profiles and lidar ratios in daytime conditions. In this way, we fulfill a two-fold objective: first, we obtain more accurate daytime aerosol information; second, we supplement column integrated measurements from AERONET sun photometers with information about the vertical distribution of aerosols. The methodology has been applied to Burjassot (39.30° N, 0.25° W) and Barcelona (41.39° N, 2.11° E) AERONET stations in the Mediterranean coast of Spain in the period from June 2006 to September 2011. We have found good agreement for the extinction profiles in several study cases of ground lidar measurements in Barcelona, coincident with CALIOP overpasses. Finally, the methodology has proved to be useful for the study of special episodes such as Saharan dust outbreaks.