The UPC lidar station is part of the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET) since its inception in 2000. EARLINET is the largest lidar network operating its advanced instruments in a coordinated way to build up a continent-wide (and beyond, since some of its lidars are operated outside Europe) aerosol climatology. EARLINET is at present part of the European Research Infrastructure for the observation of Aerosol, Clouds, and Trace gases (ACTRIS). Together with other facilities in the Barcelona area covering in-situ measurements of aerosols and trace gases, the UPC EARLINET lidar is part of the ACTRIS Barcelona cluster. ACTRIS was selected for the 2016 update of the European Strategic Forum on Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) as a candidate to become a permanent distributed research infrastructure on short lived (aerosols, clouds and reactive gases) atmospheric components, encouraging it to fully implement its services to the worldwide research community in a 10-year time frame. In addition to already providing a wealth of trustable data thorough its data portal (http://actris.nilu.no/), ACTRIS working at the administrative level to become an organization with its own legal personality under the legal figure of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium. The UPC lidar station is part through EARLINET of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) Aerosol Lidar Observations Network (GALION).
