EARLINET celebrates its 25th anniversary

By the 1st of May this year, EARLINET, the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network, has existed for 25 years. EARLINET was officially established in 2000, as a research project funded by the European Commission, within the 5th Framework Programme. 
With the establishment of the European Research Infrastructure on Aerosol, Clouds, and Trace Gases ACTRIS, the operational/measurement part of EARLINET moved to ACTRIS to have a sustainable framework for regular research lidar measurements. However, EARLINET remained a network of lidar expertise and science.
The new EARLINET hosts now include institutions performing lidar measurements, lidar development and/or lidar research related to atmospheric aerosol and clouds. EARLINET aims to foster scientific exchange, development of new technologies and fundamental research on aerosol and clouds and their interaction. By today, it has 42 member institutions, many of them part of ACTRIS, but also institutes not performing regular measurements but having strong lidar expertise. 

The 25th anniversary of EARLINET was properly celebrated during the annual meeting of the EARLINET community, which this year was held in the forefront of the European Lidar Conference ELC) in Warsaw. Starting with an introduction talk by Lucia Mona reviewing the last 25 years, also audio messages from the former speakers of EARLINET, Jens Bösenberg and Gelsomina Pappalardo, were also presented. Finally, Albert Ansmann provided his views on the beginning of EARLINET and his vision for the future. Aerosol-Cloud-Interaction, together with instrument synergy, was one key point. For this, improved observing capabilities, like daytime extinction or fluorescence are needs as well as synergistic data analysis approaches.

With respect to this, EARLINET got an exciting present in the year of its 25th anniversary, as the COST action proposal EARLICOST was granted and was kicked off on 23 September in Brussels. EARLICOST action deals with instrumental developments, synergistic data retrievals, as well as outreach and communication, and thus shapes EARLINET for the future – of course side-by-side and in close collaboration with ACTRIS. A collaboration agreement of EARLINET with ACTRIS is currently in preparation and also Eija Juurola, the Director General of ACTRIS ERIC, was also participating remotely in the EARLINET day, sharing her view on the joint future of both.
The celebration ended with a very pleasant event in Warsaw downtown, providing also a sweet present (cake) to the EARLIENT community. 

EARLINET sincerely thanks the ELC organization team of the University of Warsaw for the support and organization of the EARLINET day and celebration event!

About EARLINET

EARLINET was officially established in 2000, as a research project funded by the European Commission, within the 5th Framework Programme. After the end of this 3-year project, the network activity continued, based on a voluntary association, according to the EARLINET Constitution and Bylaws (EARLINET General Assembly in Matera, 2004). The network activity continued successfully and in 2006 the 5-year EC Project EARLINET-ASOS (Advanced Sustainable Observation System) started on the basis of the EARLINET infrastructure. 

In 2011, a new season began for EARLINET. It was integrated in the FP7 EU research infrastructure project ACTRIS (Aerosol, Clouds, and Trace gases Research Infrastructure Network), with the aim of integrating several atmospheric science communities in Europe into one coherent RI. From this date, the history of EARLINET has been strictly related to ACTRIS history, as a result of a long path, traced by the ESFRI Roadmap since 2016, made of long-term collaborations within the atmospheric science community, sustained by a series of INFRA projects that started in 2000.

With the establishment of the European Research Infrastructure on Aerosol, Clouds, and Trace Gases ACTRIS, the operational/measurement part of EARLINET moved to ACTRIS to have a sustainable framework for regular research lidar measurements. However, EARLINET remained a network of lidar expertise and science.