LALINET's Aerosol Studies

LALINET, acronym for Latin American Lidar Network, is a federation network created in 2001 and offically recognized by WMO (World Meteorological Organization) in 2013 and now is part of GALION (GAW Lidar Observation Network).Sustained and coordinated efforts of lidar teams in Latin America at the beginning of the 21st century have built LALINET (Latin American Lidar NETwork), the only observational network created in Latin America by the agreement and commitment of Latin American scientists.Before LALINET, there were a few pioneering lidar stations operating in Latin America, and through bi-annual Latin American Lidar Workshops, held from 2001 to the present, supported both the development of the regional lidar community and LALINET the creation of a self sustained network was concluded. Each federation lidar researchers from Latin America had the possibility to meet to conduct regular scientific and technical exchanges among themselves and with experts from the rest of the world. Regional and international scientific cooperation has played an important role for the development of both the individual teams and the network. The current LALINET status and activities are described,emphasizing the processes of standardization of the measurements, methodologies, calibration protocols, and retrieval algorithms.The network is composed by 9 stations in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Cuba and is projected to have more stations joined in the future. The observation of aerosol spatial and temporal distribution is one of the main goals as different sources have been identified such as biomass burning, dust and volcanic. These typification of aerosols should include optical properties to be included in radiative transfer models and includes backscattering β(z), extinction α (z) , lidar ratio α(z)/β(z), depolarization δ as quantities to be retrieved in measurements carried on in the network. Also the network is establishing data analysis protocols in order to homogenize the retirevals. It is intended to shown a brief historical approach of the network and their instrumentation development along the apst 10 years, moreover we should show two cases studies related to two short campaigns in which biomassa burning events could be observed and other regarding a volcanic eruption occured in Chile in 2015 (Calbuco Volcano).