From left to right: V. Smicov, A. Policarpov, A. Aculinin, V. Graciov
The Atmospheric
Research Group was founded in 2003.
Due to active support of the
Institute of Applied Physics
of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova
and to the financial support from the U.S. Civilian Research &
Development Foundation (CRDF) and Moldovan Research and Development Association
(MRDA) through the
grant #ME2-3033 (2003-2005), the ground based solar radiation
monitoring station was created.
The station is placed in urban environment of
Kishinev city and is installed on roof of the Institute’s building.
Coordinates of the station are following: latitude 47.0013° N,
longitude 28.8156° E and elevation 205 m a.s.l. The ground
station is composed of multifunctional radiometric complex for monitoring
of solar and atmospheric radiation in a wide spectral range from
ultra-violet (UV) up to infra-red (IR) margin of a spectrum.
The complex consists of 9 sensors of radiation for
continuous measurements of global, diffuse and direct solar radiation,
automatic sun-tracking unit 2AP BD (Kipp&Zonen, the Netherland)
and datalogger CR10X-4M (Campbell Scientific Co. ,UK) for signal processing and data storing.
Additionally, the ground station incorporates
an automatic weather station MiniMet (Skye Instruments Ltd., UK), portable hand-held ozonometer
MICROTOPS II (Solar Light Co., USA), and sunphotometer CIMEL CE-318
(Cimel Electronique, France). Sunphotometer was given by our
partners from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) within the framework of the International
program the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) related to the monitoring of the atmospheric
aerosol optical properties. AERONET program operates worldwide under the supervision of NASA/GSFC.
It has allowed essentially expand a sphere of the scientific researches of group and
to establish of the international cooperation with well-known research centers and World Data Centers.
The group carries out researches of the atmospheric
optical phenomena, optical and microphysical properties of atmospheric
aerosols, solar and atmosphere radiation within the spectral range from
ultraviolet (UV) to far infrared (IR) margin of spectrum, and total column
ozone content in an atmosphere.
A T M O S P H E R I C
