ITINERIS D4.11.2: Documentation of desert dust product

This document describes a product resulting from aerosol lidar measurements of interest for investigating the occurrence and relevance of desert dust outflows from Northern Africa over Italy. The product is connected to activity 4.11 concerning atmospheric aerosol typing and it is also linked to activity in task 8.5, where a virtual research environment making use of such product is being developed. This document is structured in two main parts, one describing the relevance and effects of desert dust in air quality, climate variability, environmental processes and climate change, one describing how the developed desert dust product is obtained starting from the standard aerosol lidar products. An annex reports the designed format of netcdf file for accommodating such a product keeping high the level of traceability and fairness used into ACTRIS aerosol remote sensing data center.