Three years of systematic lidar observations of Saharan dust outbreaks at Naples EARLINET station

The optical properties and the spatial distribution of tropospheric aerosols layers over Naples have been studied by means of Raman lidar observations performed during Saharan dust outbreaks from May 2000 to August 2003 in the frame of the EARLINET project (Bösenberg et al., 2003). Starting from lidar profiles, the characterization of the desert dust layer in term of base, top and thickness has been performed. In order to study the mean optical properties of the aerosol and to evaluate the contribution of the dust and its variability with height a statistical approach have been followed. The optical properties of the Saharan dust layer have been studied in terms of mean values of integrated backscatter (IB), optical depth (OD) and extinction-to-backscatter ratio (LR). 1