Lidar Network for Monitoring Asian Dust and Air Pollution Aerosols

Network observations of Asian dust and air pollution aerosols are being performed in the East Asian region using automated two-wavelength (1064 nm, 532 nm) polarization (532 nm) lidars. At present, the lidars are continuously operated at 20 locations including cooperative observation sites, in Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia and Thailand. The data from the network are transferred to the data center and processed automatically to derive the extinction coefficients for Asian dust and spherical aerosol. (An iterative backward integration method with an assumption of the lidar ratio and the method using the depolarization ratio for estimating the contributions of non-spherical and spherical aerosols are used in the data processing.) The data from the network are used in various studies including validation/assimilation of dust transport models and the climatological studies of aerosols and clouds.