News
Expanding the AERONET network, one instrument at a time
SSAI’s Dr. David Giles (from NASA’s AERONET program out of Goddard Space Flight Center) recently visited the San Jose campus of the University of Costa Rica and trained members of the Ticosonde project to align and maintain their new AERONET instrument on the roof of the university’s Gas Lab.
A NASA-supported collaboration between the US and Costa Rica, Ticosonde makes regular balloonsonde measurements of ozone and water vapor from the surface to the middle stratosphere over Costa Rica. Ticosonde is the only long-term balloonsonde program measuring stratospheric water vapor in the deep tropics.
The Ticosonde group gave David and the AERONET team a nice shout out on AGU’s social media last week, and have some big hopes for their instrument now that they are officially part of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) project:
“The measurements from the Cimel photometer aid researchers in understanding the impacts from pollution, dust, sea salt, and smoke here in Costa Rica. Also, we are able to gather observations from volcanic eruptions occurring in Costa Rica, as well as from Saharan dust plumes that pass over our site from across the Atlantic Ocean!” (https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbu4SjGubwT/)