Fábio Juliano da Silva Lopes¹, Eduardo Landulfo¹, Patricia Sawamura¹, Caio Alencar de Matos¹

¹Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares - IPEN

Nowadays, the concerning about the impact on Earth climate system due to anthropogenic actions is of great interest and quantifying the anthropogenic aerosols impact require a global observing system and a capacity for integrating the diverse data from different approaches. Besides the overall aerosol impact over the globe still is a matter to be better understood. In this context, the objective of this project is the study of aerosols optical properties in the São Paulo atmosphere using a elastic backscattering, Raman and polarization LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system set-up in the Center for Lasers and Applications (CLA) at the Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares (IPEN) located at University of Sao Paulo (23°33 S, 46°44 W), Brazil. The three important LIDAR techniques to be applied, namely Elastic-Backscatter LIDAR, Raman LIDAR and Polarization LIDAR will determine the aerosol optical properties such as aerosol backscatter and extinction coefficients, extinction-to-backscatter ratio (LIDAR ratio), aerosol optical thickness and particle size distribution. These LIDAR data will be validated by comparing measurements to others calibrated instruments, the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) CIMEL Sun-tracking photometer and the Cloud Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument on board the Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO), the latter has created a Quid Pro Quo validation effort in which our system is currently taking part. In the Workshop we will be presenting preliminary results done with the backscattering component of our system taken during the first months of 2007 when a satellite overpass took place over São Paulo under the time and distance constraints of ±4 hours and 70 km.