SIRTA, a multi-sensor platform for clouds and aerosols characterization in the atmosphere: infrastructure, objective and prospective

The SIRTA (Site instrumental de Recherche par Teledetection Atmospherique) is a ground-based platform located 25km south of Paris in France. The SIRTA observatory was created in 1999 by the French research institute IPSL (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace) to conduct research programs in order to improve the knowledge of radiative and dynamic processes in the atmosphere as well as complex interactions between clouds and aerosols. The objective is to better comprehend climate changes and evolution of environment using a suite a state-of-art active and passive remote sensing instruments. Two ground platforms, a wooden tower, a roof platform and a building (where the lidar operates) are the main facilities of SIRTA. The project team is composed of six persons to ensure the station operations from instrument deployment, maintenance, data transfer and preliminary data analysis. The SIRTA infrastructure enables to conduct many research activities that involve the cloud and aerosol lidar. Some of them will be discussed: the development of the STRAT (Structure of the Atmosphere) algorithm dedicated to automatically discriminate atmospheric layers and retrieve geophysical parameters from lidar profiles, and the CALIPSO validation using the dual-channel backscatter lidar deployed at SIRTA.