Site Description

Lecce_ECO is an ‘urban background’ site located about 4 km SW of the urban area of Lecce at about 15 km from the Adriatic Sea and between 30 km and 80 km from the industrial complexes of Brindisi and Taranto (the largest complexes of the Region Puglia). The site is optimal for monitoring natural pollution sources such as Saharan dust transport from North Africa towards Europe, forest fires in North Africa or Southern Italy or volcanic emissions. The contribution of regional scale pollutions due to biomass burning, agricultural wastes, and secondary pollutants production as well as new particle formation and growth events could be efficiently investigated at the observatory. Moreover, it represents an integrated system based on observations and models in order to better evaluate the aerosol transport and its impact on the radiative budget of the Earth-Atmosphere system and thus on the climate, in particular over the Mediterranean area. Therefore, the Lecce_ECO carries out research activity in order to characterize both ground-based and columnar atmospheric components. The research activity carried out at the site is linked to several observational networks (GAW-WMO, ACTRIS). The monitoring station is easily accessible and located on the rooftop of CNR-ISAC, Lecce building. It hosts a suite of active and passive remote sensing and ground-based instruments that provide climatologically significant observations of the main aerosol optical and microphysical properties at the surface and along the aerosol column. It represents the largest permanent observation site in the Apulia region.