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MOUNTAIN SITE – MONTSEC D’ARES

The Montsec d’Ares monitoring site is located at the top of the Serra del Montsec, a calcareous mountain range in the Pre-Pyrenees, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, northeast Spain. It is located within the facilities of the Montsec Astronomic Observatory, Montsec d’Ares (42° 3'5.95"N, 0°43'46.03"E, 1600 meters amsl, http://www.oadm.cat/en/home.htm), Lleida.

Most measurements are available since 2010, when the container was installed. However, PMx levels and PM speciation measurements, obtained in the framework of the DAMOCLES project, are available since 2005.

The site consists of one air-conditioned shelter for aerosols in-situ and trace gas monitoring. The site is equipped with instruments for measuring physical, optical and chemical properties of aerosols (see table).

Research carried out at this site is included in the Aerosols and Climate and Air Quality research lines. This research aims to:

• to get a time-series and interpret the spatial and temporal variability of physico-chemical and optical parameters of the tropospheric aerosols in remote areas in the Western Mediterranean;

• to study the aerosol formation and change processes in an environment with no local anthropogenic emissions influence;

• to identify the atmospheric PM sources, with special emphasis on the contribution from long range transport;

• to determine the main aerosol parameters for the development of radiative models (aerosol optical depth, single scattering albedo, aerosol asymmetry parameter, among others)

Variables measured and instruments available at MONTSEC MOUNTAIN SITE