Updates from CARS

The Centre for Aerosol Remote Sensing (CARS), in collaboration with the Aerosol Remote Sensing unit at the ACTRIS Data Centre, organized 8 (eight) webinars during 2021. This action is meant to keep the community around scientific and technical aspects of the ACTRIS operations while compensating as much as possible for the lack of face-to-face meetings. The webinars are open to the entire aerosol remote sensing community, focusing on the technical challenges of the lidar instrument and data processing. Lidar scientists propose and introduce topics, and CARS and ARES teams moderate discussions. The average number of participants up to now was 56, demonstrating a steady interest in resolving the remaining issues for the implementation of the lidar data workflows.

The calibration of the photometers continues as usual, as well as the QA/QC activities for the aerosol high-power lidars and for the low-power lidars and ceilometers. Important efforts are invested in standardizing operational data products throughout the entire production chain, especially for the high-power lidars which are currently not standardized at the instrument level, therefore extremely different from station to station.