Investigation of 2021 summer wildfires in the Eastern Mediterranean: The ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence capabilities for atmospheric studies

In the summer of 2021, several wildfires were reported in the south of Turkey, fires that are considered one of the worst in the history of Turkey. Due to atmospheric conditions, the smoke plume travelled south between 27 July to 5 August 2021, and smoke layers arrived above Cyprus. 

In this work, the capabilities of the newly established ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (CoE), to study large-scale atmospheric events is presented. The study is based on the synergistic use of different datasets of remote sensing techniques both from ground and space. The EARLINET multiwavelength-Raman-polarization lidar PollyXT-CYP hosted by the ERATOSTHENES CoE is continuously running since October 2020 in Limassol, and during summer 2021, the lidar observed smoke plumes from these extreme wildfires on the south coast of Turkey.  

The PollyXT-CYP is a key research infrastructure of the Cyprus Atmospheric Remote Sensing Observatory (CARO) of the ERATOSTHENES CoE established through the EXCELSIOR H2020 EU Teaming project coordinated by the Cyprus University of Technology. CARO will consist of two high-tech containers housing the PollyXT-CYP lidar and state-of-the art doppler lidar, cloud radar and radiometric equipment which will be used to measure the air quality, the dust transport, and the cloud properties over Cyprus. The CARO is a planning National Facility of the Republic of Cyprus for Aerosol and Cloud Remote Sensing Observations.

Land cover information which shows the type of burned vegetation is used together with satellite products to capture additionally the burned area and to investigate the carbon monoxide of the smoke plume. The study is focusing on the optical characteristics of the plume, as it was detected by the PollyXT-CYP lidar at Limassol. An intense fresh smoke layer was detected on 28-29 July 2021, at an altitude between 2.5 to 4.0 km, having a volume depolarization ratio of ~15% at 355n and ~20% at 532nm, and lidar ratio of 75-80sr at 355nm and 65-70sr at 532nm.

 

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the ‘EXCELSIOR’: ERATOSTHENES: EΧcellence Research Centre for Earth Surveillance and Space-Based Monitoring of the Environment H2020 Widespread Teaming project (www.excelsior2020.eu). The ‘EXCELSIOR’ project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 857510, from the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Directorate General for the European Programmes, Coordination and Development and the Cyprus University of Technology. The PollyXT-CYP was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) via the PoLiCyTa project (grant no. 01LK1603A). The study is supported by “ACCEPT” project (Prot. No: LOCALDEV-0008) co-financed by the Financial Mechanism of Norway (85%) and the Republic of Cyprus (15%) in the framework of the programming period 2014 - 2021.