Ellsworth J. Welton1, James R. Campbell2, Timothy A. Berkoff3, Sandra Valencia4, James D. Spinhirne1, Brent Holben1, and Si-Chee Tsay1, Beat Schmid5

1NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8300 Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD, 20771, USA, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
2University of Alaska - Fairbanks, Atmospheric Sciences, P.O. Box 757320 Geophysical Institute, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
3University of Maryland Baltimore County, Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center, 5523 Research Park Dr., Suite 300, Baltimore, MD, 21228, USA, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
4Science Systems and Applications Inc., 10210 Greenbelt Rd, Suite 600, Lanham, MD, 20706, USA, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
5Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, MS 245-5, Moffett Field, CA, 94035, USA, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

We present the formation of a global ground-based eye-safe lidar network, the NASA Micro-Pulse Lidar Network (MPLNET) – founded in 2000. The aim of MPLNET is to acquire long-term observations of aerosol and cloud vertical profiles at unique geographic sites collocated with sunphotometers in the NASA Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). These joint MPLNET/AERONET sites collect data on aerosol and cloud vertical structure, cloud presence, aerosol column optical depth, size distribution, single scatter albedo, and sky radiance. An overview of MPLNET is provided here, including network structure, data products, and recent results from aerosol transport studies and satellite calibration/validation.