Bucharest Summer School 2013: Aerosol Remote Sensing, Processes & Applications
by Doina Nicolae
The 1st Initial Training for atmospheric Remote Sensing - ITARS Summer School took place at the Romanian Atmospheric Research 3D Observatory - RADO Site during September 23 - October 4, 2013. During this Summer School 23 teachers and experts from 10 countries (UK, Germany, USA, Italy, Serbia, Greece, France, Netherland, Romania, Spain) and 26 students from 11 countries (Spain, Italy, Germany, UK, Netherland, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Hong Kong, Finland, Canada) were invited. This Summer School was primarily designated to young researchers to improve their theoretical and practical skills regarding aerosol remote sensing.
ESR4 was hosted for a secondment in INOE 2000
Right after our summer school I (Stefanos Samaras) extended my stay to Bucharest to fulfill my secondment in INOE, Bucharest. My work there focused on two targets: 1) Extract the microphysics for spherical particles and 2) Improve the algorithm of Bucharest group for the calculation of the extinction coefficient profile.
A lot of work was done for the first part. Many runs of microphysical retrieval code gave us the chance to study not only the behavior of our algorithm for different set-ups (both from mathematical and physical point-of-view) but also compare it with the sun photometer- and AMS retrievals. Not every single run confirmed our expectation or physical intuition, and this is mostly due to the fact that very little information is used as an input (only 5 optical parameters) and that the automatized way to produce and restrict the solution space is not always trustworthy and has to be further verified by operator’s experience. In addition, I had the chance to watch closer the synergy between lidar systems and the AMS.
ESR3 and ESR8 were hosted for a secondment at METEK
by Pilar Gumà Claramunt and Alexander Myagkov
Pilar Gumà Claramunt (ESR3) and Alexander Myagkov (ESR8) were hosted during the last summer for a secondment at METEK (Elmshorn, Germany) that lasted for a month and three weeks respectively. This period has been very profitable for both 
of them in working closely with the cloud radar MIRA-36 and, especially, with the radar data processing. The focus has been the well understanding of the radar measurements and the discussion and implementation of new polarimetric and spectral methods in the radar data processing chain. These new algorithms are now under evaluation and will be implemented at the fellow’s sites (Potenza and Leipzig). Special data formats were developed in order to save the new parameters. Besides the intensive work, the fellows had the opportunity to visit Hamburg and to reach the Elbe river by bikes. Both fellows are very grateful to Matthias Bauer-Pfundstein, Alexander Partus and the whole METEK team for all their support and help during this very interesting and fruitful period.
ESR2 was hosted for a secondment at the University of Cologne
by Umar Saeed
I was in Cologne during August and it has been a very nice and good learning experience. During this stay of one month in Cologne I have worked on microwave radiometer data which is available on the university of Cologne servers. The focus has been to learn and understand the development of diurnal cycle of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) based on the data from 20.04.2013. We chose this day because there are several radio-sonde launches on this day which means more data and also because there is a quite nice evolution of ABL on this day. Moreover the sensitivity of measured brightness temperature to the ground temperature, boundary layer height and temperature gradient in the free troposphere was also studied.
Many thanks to Prof. Susanne Crewell, Uli Löhnert, Mario, Gabriele, Maria, Claudia and other group members at the UCOL for their hospitality and support in making this visit interesting and useful for me.