EARLINET Single Calculus Chain for Automatic Lidar Data Processing: First Tests on Optical Products

Within the EARLINET-ASOS (European Aerosol Re- search Lidar Network - Advanced Sustainable Observa- tion System) project great importance was given to the optimization of lidar data processing. The main goal was to develop a common processing chain (the Single Calculus Chain - SCC) to get atmospheric aerosol prod- ucts from raw lidar data in an automatic way and with- out the need for operator interaction. The data from all EARLINET lidar systems can be analyzed with the SCC producing homogeneous and quality-assured prod- ucts. The SCC was already tested successfully with syn- thetic lidar signals used for the EARLINET algorithm inter-comparison exercise. In this work we present the first tests of the SCC on real lidar data. In particular data from EARLI09 (EARlinet Lidar Inter-comparison) have been used to compare SCC results with the analysis made by the analysis software developed by each EARLINET group individually. SCC retrievals for elastic and Raman aerosol backscatter and for aerosol extinction have been compared obtaining a good agreement.