Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the May 2000 edition of the AERONET Quarterly. I shall be brief on the following topics.

May 1 Ross Nelson came on board to serve an AERONET Operations Manager. This is absolutely great news for everyone involved in AERONET as Ross is very organized, has fresh eyes, is realistic and is a civil servant. He will take over all my operations activities including overseeing the calibration and maintenance at GSFC, deployments, shipping and organization of the instrument handling process. If you have any questions regarding instruments, please call Ross Nelson at 301-614-6632 or email ross@ltpmail.gsfc.nasa.gov

May 7 Katie Nantubuth replaced Laura East and has assumed many of the same responsibilities including being the point of contact for shipping and tracking instruments. She has much need programming skills and will help keep our homepage up to date with the latest operational information and news of AERONET activities. Most everyone will hear from Katie during the coarse your involvement with the project and brings another language to the project, Thai. Ph: 301 614-6662; e-mail: katie@aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov

With Ross and Katie on board, I'll be phasing out of daily operational activities that were taking most of my time. I'll remain the project manager but look forward to considerably more time to spend on research activities. Unless it's research related please contact Ross or Katie.

Please check each day through the homepage or the e-mail troubleshooting report that your instrument are working properly (ET~2 minutes). Please make a weekly physical check (ET~10 minutes).

For new sites: Please notify us in advance when you intend to turn your transmitter on and the location and elevation of the site. This also applies to seasonal sites coming back on line.

Swapout process: Please coordinate the field instrument replacement with Wayne Newcomb (Ross Nelson as a backup) to minimize downtime and facilitate return of the instrument for calibration.

As instruments are returned, the software in the cimel is being upgraded such that half almucantars are made. This basically eliminates cable-binding problems.

Foreign importation has been a hassle. Please follow the directions on the homepage or please call Katie for details.

The Dubovik inversion products now available on the homepage include size distribution, spectral phase function, spectral single scattering albedo, spectral complex index of refraction, volume concentration, and Volume mean radius. The Dubovik size distributions are now graphically displayed. The Nakajima inversions are also available.

The home page has the following ~new features:

1. Interactive troubleshooting help for the cimel and Vitel with pictures
2. Antenna pointing program
3. Packing information
4. Shipping information
5. Cimel Lat. Long parameter calculator
6. UT clock
7. Status page of instrument calibration (you can follow the calibration steps of your instrument)
8. Site manager list
9. Details of instrumentation that AERONET supports
10. Improved data access and visualization
11. Summary details of inversion products
12. Summary details of cloud screening
13. Summary details of calibration procedures
14. PDF files of Key AERONET papers
15. AERONET staff Publication list
16. AERONET publication list (Please if you use AERONET data forward your publication to Katie for inclusion in this list as the current list is not up to date)

May 18 to 19 the AERONET staff had a review by the external steering committee. This included presentations by staff and external participants on research and operational issues. I think all participants on both sides of the table felt the review was very worth while. Based on the wrap up statements the committee provided strong support of the program and clear direction for future activities. The committee report will be posted on the homepage.

Holben et al., AERONET AOD Climatology paper to be submitted this week to JGR

Smirnov et al. Cloud clearing paper accepted by RSE

Smirnov et al., TARFOX-US Atlantic coast aerosol optical properties, published JGR

Dubovik et al. Inversion Sensitivity paper published in JGR

Dubovik & King Inversion theory paper accepted by JGR

Eck et al. Biomass burning in S. Africa accepted by JGR

O'Neill et al., bi-modal influences on spectral curvature, accepted by JGR

O'Neill et al., log normal paper submitted to GRL

A unique and emerging use of the AERONET data is simultaneous comparison of aerosol optical properties to satellite and modeled data sets. In collaboration with the MODIS Atmospheres team, Ilya wrote an experimental program to download AOD for all sites on a daily basis in a large spreadsheet. These data may be accessed retrospectively and certainly the door is open for temporal and spatial selection as well as adding additional aerosol retrievals. Last issue I asked the PI's for comments regarding acknowledgement of any publications that result from data used in global downloads. The silence was deafening. Please comment to me on the following policy I suggested:

Provide a public domain AERONET multi-site product available through the AERONET homepage selectable by space and time. All sites will be used unless a PI contacts me with his objection. An additional ‘collaboration button’ will be added requiring acknowledgement of each PI whose data contribute to the study. Thus for analysis and publications developed from downloads of multi-site products requires acknowledgement. Individual site downloads requires authorship to be offered.

Fax: 301 614 6695

If you wish to add someone or be deleted from this mailing please reply to Katie.

Cheers,

Brent