Center for aerosol Remote Sensing

CARS ACTRIS
Observation and environment, lasers and their applications Platform Science for a changing planet

Our platform ensures the scientific and technical management of the solar/lunar photometers, located in France, Europe and Africa, within the framework of the AERONET network. The platform is integrated in a National Observation Service of INSU and is a constituent unit of the Central Facility CARS (Center for Aerosol Remote Sensing) of the European infrastructure ACTRIS. Our activity allows generation and documentation in real time of descriptive variables of atmospheric aerosols, which play a key role in the Earth's climate and air quality.  Our activity is also essential for the approval of space missions for earth and atmosphere observation. In 2019, lidar observation has been integrated into the platform's activities.

Informations

Technical director: Luc Blarel
Technical director: Thierry Podvin
Scientific diretor: Philippe Goloub

https://www.actris.fr/

Bâtiment P5, Avenue Paul Langevin
Campus cité scientifique, Université de Lille
59655 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ

Mots-clés

Aerosols, Radiation, Climate, Photometer, AERONET, Lidar, EARLINET, ACTRIS, Air quality, Cal/Val satellite

Localisation

  • Aerosol optical measurements by solar/lunar photometric technology (network approach) 
  • Aerosol optical measurements using Mie-Polarized-Raman-Fluorescence lidar technology (network approach)
  • Optical aerosol measurements using mobile systems (car, plane, boat)  
  • Network management of instruments in Europe and Africa
  • Instrumental, methodological and algorithmic development
  • Field measurement campaigns (regional, national, international)
  • Production of aerosol descriptive variables in near-real time
  • Public availability of these data in quasi-real time (between +15 min and +1 hour)
  • Quality control and quality assurance
  • Monitoring of the instrumentation, quality control
  • Annual maintenance and calibration of instruments (for the photometric part)
  • Improvement of measurement, characterization and calibration protocols (optical, electronic, mechanical, algorithmic)
  • Instrumental development (photometry and lidar) and TRL increase, in connection with the industry.
  • Algorithmic development (photometry and lidar) and the mutualization of its application via the AERIS/ICARE data and service center
  • Loan of instruments for scientific campaigns
  • Organization of measurement campaigns

We possess a range of equipment:

  • Solar photometers, automatic lunar Cimel CE318T in the AERONET/ACTRIS network
  • LiDAR Aerosol/Cloud/Water Vapor Research (LILAS), European network EARLINET/ACTRIS
  • Three photometric calibration platforms (Lille, Haute-Provence and Hawaii (USA))
  • Mobile Aerosol Measurement System (MAMS), 3D aerosol variability measurement
  • Integrating spheres (photometric calibration)
  • Automatic micro-lidar (METIS, CE376), for vertical aerosol profiling

Private
CIMEL (Laboratoire commun AGORA-Lab), TENUM, GRASP SAS

Academic
NASA, OHP-GEO, LISA, ESA, CNES, IRD
NASA (USA), Université de Valladolid (Spain), Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos/World Radiation Center (Switzerland), Polish Academy of Science (Poland)
CNR (Italy), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany), National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics (Romania), Politehnica University Timisoara (Romania), Metoffice (UK)
WRC (Switzerland), Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy), University of Hertfordshire (UK), Cyprus University of Technology (Cyprus), Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (Belgium)

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