Overview of the NOAA/ESRL Federated Aerosol Network

In order to estimate global aerosol radiative forcing, measurements of aerosol optical propertiesare made by the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory’s Global Monitoring Division(ESRL/GMD) and their collaborators at 30 monitoring locations around the world. Many of thesites are located in regions influenced by specific aerosol types (e.g., Asian and Saharan desertdust, Asian pollution, biomass burning, etc.). This network of monitoring stations is a sharedendeavor of NOAA and many collaborating organizations, including the World MeteorologicalOrganization Global Atmosphere Watch (WMO/GAW) Program, the U.S. Department of Energy(DOE), several U.S. and foreign universities, and foreign science organizations. The result is along-term, cooperative program making atmospheric measurements that are directly comparablewith those from all the other network stations and with shared data access. The protocols andsoftware developed to support the program facilitate participation in GAW’s atmosphericobservation strategy and the sites in the NOAA/ESRL network make up a substantial subset ofthe GAW aerosol observations. This paper describes the history of the NOAA/ESRL FederatedAerosol Network, details about measurements and operations and some recent findings from thenetwork measurements.