As part of its commitment to supporting research, mobility and collaboration across the participating countries, EARLICOST awarded 38 grants in 2026: 9 Young Researcher and Innovator (YRI) Conference Grants, 4 Inclusiveness Target Country (ITC) Conference Grants, 1 Dissemination Conference (DC) Grant, 1 Virtual Network Support (VNS) Grant, 21 Virtual Mobility (VM) Grants, and 2 Short-Term Scientific Missions (STSMs). These grants support a wide range of scientific, networking, and knowledge-exchange activities. While some activities are still ongoing, several grantees have already presented their research at major international events, including:

1. The ACTRIS Science Conference in Oslo (20–23 April 2026)
2. The EarthCARE 2026 Science and Validation Workshop in Oxford (8–12 June 2026)
3. The 32nd International Laser Radar Conference (ILRC32) in Hiroshima, Japan (5–10 July 2026)

Contributions and Activities

The following highlights showcase selected research contributions and activities supported by EARLICOST grants across atmospheric science, remote sensing, and lidar technologies. They illustrate results achieved so far, while several other grant-supported activities are still ongoing.

The contributions span five main scientific themes:

• Spaceborne/Cloud-Aerosol studies:
  – Anastasia Pantazi (National Observatory of Athens, Greece) presented “Assessing Aerosol and Cloud features over the Mediterranean using CALIPSO, CloudSat and EarthCARE”.
  – Franco Marenco (The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus) presented “Quantifying atmospheric aerosols using EarthCARE”.
  – Gabriela Ciocan (National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics, Romania) presented “A multi-station analysis of cloud modification by successive Canadian wildfire smoke intrusions over Europe“.
  – Stefan Nicolae (National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics, Romania) presented “A preliminary end-to-end ATLID validation chain using ACTRIS-EARLINET data“
• Dust Study/Modelling:
  – Anna Gialitaki (National Observatory of Athens, Greece) presented “Reproducing Dust Spectral Backscatter Using Simple Shape Mixtures”.
  – Alexandra Tsekeri (National Observatory of Athens, Greece) presented “Saharan Dust PLDR, Using Realistic Shapes, Sizes and Refractive Indices”.
  – Avinash Yadav (University of Hertfordshire, UK) presented “Chemical Characterization of Dust with Spectroscopic Lidar”.
  – Christodoulos Biskas (Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) presented “Evaluated MAPIR v5 dust retrievals using EARLINET Lidars”.
  -Zuhir Bona (The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus) completed an STSM on “Improved dust retrievals with ground-based and spaceborne lidar“.
• Fluorescence and Raman lidar:
  – Giovanni Giuliano (ISMAR-CNR, Italy) presented ”Spectrometric fluorescence and Raman lidar at ARTE site for advanced tropospheric studies”, contributing to discussions on harmonising fluorescence retrieval algorithms within EARLICOST sub-working group 1B.
  – Sol Fernández-Carvelo (University of Granada, Spain) presented “GENERALIFE, combining dual-fluorescence Raman lidar with remote-sensing and in situ data for aerosol typing”.
• Water Vapour:
  – Victor Naval-Hernández (University of Granada, Spain) presented “Progress towards operational tropospheric water vapour monitoring with the dual-field Raman lidar ALHAMBRA”.
  – Marco Di Paolantonio (ISMAR-CNR) presented “Preliminary results from the Lidar-based Atmospheric Measurement at Pianosa (LAMP) field campaign”.
• Synergy and smoke:
  – Athina Savva (Eratosthenes Centre, Cyprus) compared GRASP aerosol retrievals with and without volume depolarization ratio, using PollyXT lidar and AERONET sun-photometer data in Limassol.
  – Maria Poutli (Eratosthenes Centre, Cyprus) presented “PollyXT optical characterization of long-range smoke transported from North America over the Eastern Mediterranean”, and also completed an STSM on “Lidar and complementary techniques for wildfire smoke”.

These activities demonstrate how EARLICOST grants contribute to scientific exchange, methodological development and international collaboration. From advancing lidar retrieval techniques to supporting coordinated observations and knowledge sharing, the results achieved so far highlight the value of the Action’s grant opportunities. As further activities are completed, they will create additional opportunities for collaboration across the atmospheric science and lidar communities.