Harmonia COST Action: Overview of aerosol optical depth calibration and homogenization activities

Harmonia is a COST Action funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology. It deals with networking and scientific activities related with columnar aerosol measurements and involves scientists dealing with measurements, model assimilation , satellite validation but also software and instrument developers. The scope of the presentation is to provide an overview of the global status of aerosol sun photometer networks and the homogenization activities performed towards reducing spatiotemporal aerosol properties uncertainties.

Harmonia COST Action aims to establish a network involving institutions, instrument developers, scientific and commercial end users, in order to homogenize aerosol retrievals using mainly solar and sky but also lunar and star photometers from different networks. It aims bridging user needs and the science and technology expertise residing in academia and industry, through:

- Increasing the interactions and knowledge exchanges between several atmospheric aerosol measurement networks.

- Standardizing and improving of existing products and tools, toward a “harmony” in the aerosol photometry.

- Stimulating the communication between operational agencies and academia, increasing the applicability of aerosol related products.

- Capacity building towards instrument operators on improving the use of solar, lunar and stellar radiometry/photometry instrumentation.

- Encouraging the dialogue between researchers and instrument manufacturers towards instrument technical improvements.

The presentation aims to provide an overview of the current methods to measure aerosol columnar properties from the surface and also an overview of the homogenization activities towards better ground-based products towards better representation of the aerosol field and aerosol effects on climate, model assimilation and satellite validation. Including:

- The current state of the art of instrument calibration including project results towards establishing a traceability to the SI system of units,

- Aerosol sun photometric networks` common international comparison towards measurement homogenization

- The status of the Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS), Calibration of aerosol remote sensing and links to Harmonia

Acknowledgement

This research has been supported by the This article/publication is based upon work from COST Action HARMONIA, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) .