ARCADE - Atmospheric Research for Climate and Astroparticle DEtection

TL;DR

The ARCADE project aims to compare atmospheric aerosol measurement techniques used in cosmic ray physics to identify systematic errors, utilizing a new LIDAR system and existing side-scattering measurements for simultaneous air mass observations.

Contribution

This study introduces a novel LIDAR system and a comparative framework for aerosol attenuation measurements in cosmic ray experiments.

Findings

Comparison of measurement techniques will quantify systematic errors.

Simultaneous observations improve aerosol characterization accuracy.

New LIDAR system under construction for enhanced measurements.

Abstract

The characterization of the optical properties of the atmosphere in the near UV, in particular the tropospheric aerosol stratification, clouds optical depth and spatial distribution are common in the field of atmospheric physics, due to aerosol effect on climate, and also in cosmic rays physics, for a correct reconstruction of energy and longitudinal development of showers. The goal of the ARCADE project is the comparison of the aerosol attenuation measurements obtained with the typical techniques used in cosmic ray experiments (side-scattering measurement, elastic LIDAR and Raman LIDAR) in order to assess the systematic errors affecting each method providing simultaneous observations of the same air mass with different techniques. For this purpose we projected a LIDAR that is now under construction: it will use a 355 nm Nd:YAG laser and will collect the elastic and the N2 Raman back-scattered light. For the side-scattering measurement we will use the Atmospheric Monitoring Telescope, a facility owned by the Colorado School of Mines and placed in Lamar (Colorado), the site where our experiment will take place.