The Italian Automated Lidar Ceilometer Network ALICENET: retrievals and applications in support to urban air quality monitoring

ALICENET is the Italian network of Automated Lidar-Ceilometers (ALCs) coordinated by CNR-ISAC, operationally running (24/7) several systems across the country, including main urban areas. Particulate matter and atmospheric dynamics monitoring through profiling remote sensing techniques is explored within the H2020 RI-URBANS project (WP1) and, in this framework, ALC-based products will be made available to the scientific and stakeholder communities. These include, among others, aerosol extinction and mass concentration profiles, directly usable by the research community as well as by environmental, meteorological, health and aviation safety agencies. In this work, the ALICENET data processing is applied and showcased for three RI-URBANS pilot sites: Milan, Rome (Italy) and Paris (France). These are characterized by different aerosol and atmospheric conditions: Milan is strongly influenced by high anthropic emissions and transport dynamics within the Po Basin, Rome is an example of urban conditions in the Mediterranean area, and Paris is representative of aerosol conditions affected by both local and continental sources. The ALC-retrieved aerosol quantities are compared with both advanced in-situ/remote sensing observations and modeled fields to identify potential upscaling issues of the data inversion procedure. The work will focus on the added value of the aerosol profile products for air quality monitoring in urban sites.