Collaboration between CIMEL Electronique and CARS-CNR-IMAA

A best practice in the collaboration between the French company CIMEL Electronique and CNR-IMAA CARS Unit in Italy.

CIMEL Electronique is a French company and world-leading manufacturer of automatic meteorological instrumentation with expertise in meteorology, atmosphere optics, design of integrated systems, software solution development, and production control.

The collaboration with the unit CNR-IMAA Atmospheric Observatory in Italy led to different comparison exercises and the participation of CIMEL in the INTERACT II (Intercomparison of aerosol and Cloud Tracking) measurement campaign to study the atmosphere through the use and integration of its different active and passive remote sensing techniques, in order to evaluate and test the potential use of such automated instrumentation for monitoring of aerosols produced by different sources (both natural and anthropogenic, such as desert dust, typically observed in the Mediterranean area during the summer, fires present in Eastern Europe and North America).

CIMEL has also been in charge of operating the automated CE370/CE376 Lidar, of data acquisition and analysis of data measured in combination with a CE318-T photometer, and the comparative analysis with CIMEL iAAMS software.

CNR-IMAA has also been supportive of CIMEL Lidar performance for aerosol and cloud measurements, and to evaluate the stability, sensitivity, and uncertainties of automated lidars and ceilometers in terms of instrumental sensitivity and uncertainties, and to put these into context by simultaneously assessing the performance of a high specification research lidar. These activities represent first-time inter-comparison tests of commercial ceilometers and lidars; and future tests and collaborations are foreseen.