Aerosol particles in the atmosphere have a significant impact on the global radiation budget, clouds, human health, climate and air quality. These particles are created or emitted by a variety of processes before being transported and distributed locally, regionally, across continents and even between continents.
Aerosol particles are transported at different altitudes in the atmosphere, from the ground surface to the stratosphere at 10–15 km altitude. Only lidar instruments can capture the vertical distribution of these particles and their impact on cloud formation and climate change.
For the first time, a ground-based aerosol lidar was deployed in Albania to perform vertically resolved observations. The aim was to continuously monitor the environmental conditions over the Albanian capital for one year, to document the pollution state in Tirana and to investigate the influence of long-range transport of aerosol pollution from surrounding European countries as well as from North America and of mineral dust from Africa to Albania. The evaluation of the one-year dataset will be combined with space-based lidar observations and backward trajectory analyzes at different altitudes.
This knowledge is crucial for understanding air pollution, studying aerosol dispersion, improving climate models, and optimizing satellite-based observations of climate parameters from space.
A significant impact of domestic wood combustion, typical for the Western Balkans region, on the increased PM2.5 levels during winter was observed, contributing to the degraded of air quality. For the first time, the extinction-to-backscatter ratio (Lidar ratio) of smoke from domestic wood combustion was analyzed. Exceptionally high Lidar ratio values were measured during winter, which can be attributed to the high black carbon content of wood combustion emissions.