AEROPA: About us

Welcome to the AEROPA project page, powered by CÆLIS. In this web you can access data related with the project AEROPA funded by the Spanish Ministry for Research and Innovation whose title is “Caracterización de las observaciones de aerosoles en Europa de la red AERONET para su uso dentro de los objetivos de la red EMEP” (CGL2009-09740).

The aim of this proposal is establishing a set of recommendations about the correct use of the column-integrated aerosol data provided by AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network,), within the objectives and scope of the European network EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme o Co-operative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-Range Transmission of Air Pollutant in Europe). One of the main objectives is the development, application and operation of a simplified version of the Unified EMEP model, to estimate the aerosol optical depth. The U-EMEP is a chemical transport model (CTM) developed by the MSC-W (Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-West) center, belonging to the MET.NO, Norwegian Meteorological Institute. This model estimates the concentration of various atmospheric components, by tracking the long-range transboundary atmospheric transport, at a global, regional or local scale. The simplified version provides aerosol optical depth (AOD), by means of an aerosol model that estimates this radiative property. The AOD is not a common product of CTM, but nowadays it is seen as a necessary quantity for the global aerosol characterization.

This project is designed to meet the need for an assessment and analysis of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Ångström exponent (AE) data delivered by AERONET, for the comparison over the European region with the EMEP/MSC-W model. For this project we define the following objectives: a) Diagnosis of AERONET data quality over Europe and North Africa for aerosol characterization. Development of a relational database. b) Characterization of the AOD-AE data over Europe and its significance for climatology. c) Comparison of AOD-AE AERONET data with EMEP-MSC-W model in the European area taking into account the different quality levels of AERONET data. d) Sensitivity study of the AOD retrieval algorithm to local parameters (pressure, ozone, clouds) in the comparison against the EMEP-MSC-W model. e) Discrimination and classification of aerosol types in Europe based on their optical properties and air mass origin.

The importance of aerosols has increased in the last years, because they are a basic component of air pollution which can have serious impacts on human health, and above all for a better knowledge of their role in climate. The first reasons gave rise to the UE regulation on particulate matter. The second one leads to the research of the influence of aerosols on radiation, the so-called aerosol radiative forcing and its associated uncertainties.

This project intends to establish a set of recommendations principally addressed to environment policy makers, atmospheric science community and also to other entities that contribute to the study of Climate Change by aerosols.

At this moment we are working on objective c), as the other tasks are already achieved. However, we must emphasize that in addition to the planned objectives, we have carried out a wide evaluation of other aerosol parameters such as: the microphysical parameters, the asymmetry parameter, the single scattering albedo, etc., a work that was not included in the initial objectives of the Project. This extensive evaluation has the advantage to give a more complete characterization of the aerosol properties that are provided by AERONET.

Most of these results can be seen in this website through the selection of a given site. This system, which is continuously improving, was designed for aerosol data analysis related to aerosol studies. The GOA-UVa strongly believes that it will be useful for most AERONET users in Europe and other research groups working in this field.