SIMULTANEOUS OBSERVATIONS OF FREE TROPOSPHERIC SAHARAN DUST LAYERS OVER EUROPE MONITORED BY A CO-ORDINATED GROUND-BASED LIDAR NETWORK IN THE FRAME OF THE EARLINET PROJECT

Atmospheric particles and mainly the mineral dust particles, play an important role in the earth's radiation balance and climate, by scattering and absorbing, both incoming and outcoming radiation, (Seinfeld and Pandis, 1998). Every year important quantities of desert dust from the Sahara and surrounding regions are exported to the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea (Hamonou et al., 1999; Gobbi et al., 2000). Saharan dust events have been studied mainly using satellite data (Dulac et al., 1992), as a consequence, very few publications exist on the vertical distribution of desert dust particles over the Mediterranean Sea (Hamonou et al., 1999; Gobbi et al., 2000) and central Europe (Jaeger et al., 1988).