Exceptional aerosol pollution plume observed using a new ULA-lidar approach

An exceptional particulate pollution event was sampled in June 2005 over the Ardèche region in Southern France. Airborne (at the wavelength of 355 nm) and ground-based (at the wavelength of 532 nm) lidars performed measurements simultaneously. Airborne observations were performed from an ultra-light aircraft (ULA); they offer an opportunity to test a new method for inversing lidar profiles which enables their quantitative use while the airplane flies in a scattering layer. Using the results of this approach and the ground-based lidar measurements, the aerosol plumes have been optically quantified and the diversity of particle sources (from Western Europe, North Africa and even North America) which contributed to the event has been highlighted using both spaceborne observations and multiple air mass back-trajectories.