LAB LIDAR

MARCO (​Micro-pulse Atmospheric Optical Radar for Climate Observations)  

MARCO (​Micro-pulse Atmospheric Optical Radar for Climate Observations) is a compact and easily transportable lidar based on high repetition rate solid-state laser technology. It allows the measurement of water vapor profiles and backscatter and extinction coefficients of atmospheric particulates; the capability to provide temperature profiles will be implemented in the next months.

This system successfully demonstrated the capability of atmospheric thermodynamic profiling by Raman lidar using a micro-pulse laser source,​ operating continuously over a period of 16 months.

Di Girolamo, P., Franco, N., Di Paolantonio, M., Summa, D., and Dionisi, D.: Atmospheric Thermodynamic Profiling through the Use of a Micro-Pulse Raman Lidar System: Introducing the Compact Raman Lidar MARCO, Sensors, 23, 8262, https://doi.org/10.3390/s23198262, 2023. 

Measurement campaigns

• LAMP (Lidar-based Atmospheric Measurement at Pianosa) Pianosa, Italy, January 2025 - ongoing
  
  The project, coordinated by the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) aims at characterizing marine aerosols and monitoring atmospheric water vapor to understand the interactions between marine aerosols and cloud formation and to study extreme precipitation events in the Mediterranean.
  
  
• DECIPHER (Disentangling mechanisms controlling atmospheric transport and mixing processes over mountain areas at different space- and timescales) Passo Valles (Trento), Italy, July 2024 - October 2024
  
  The goal of the project, coordinated by the University of Trento, is to characterise atmospheric turbulence in the surface layer over mountain slopes and the associated surface-atmosphere exchange processes by means of targeted intensive field measurements. The project is part of TEAMx (Multi-scale transport and exchange processes in the atmosphere over mountains – programme and experiment), https://www.teamx-programme.org/projects/DECIPHER/.
  
  
• WaLiNeAs (Water vapor Lidar Network Assimilation)  Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône , France, November 2022 - February 2024
  
  An international project coordinated by CNRS and Météo-France. WaLiNeAs is aimed at studying extreme precipitation events and improving their predictability through the assimilation into mesoscale numerical models of water vapor profile measurements from a network of Raman lidar systems.
  
  Flamant, C., Chazette, P., Caumont, O., Di Girolamo, P., Behrendt, A., Sicard, M., Totems, J., Lange, D., Fourrié, N., Brousseau, P., Augros, C., Baron, A., Cacciani, M., Comerón, A., De Rosa, B., Ducrocq, V., Genau, P., Labatut, L., Muñoz-Porcar, C., Rodríguez-Gómez, A., Summa, D., Thundathil, R., and Wulfmeyer, V.: A network of water vapor Raman lidars for improving heavy precipitation forecasting in southern France: introducing the WaLiNeAs initiative, Bull. of Atmos. Sci.& Technol., 2, 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42865-021-00037-6, 2021.