Many of the direct effects of climate change are determined by the analysis of long-term datasets of (e.g.) temperature, UV radiation, ozone and humidity. These types of datasets are typically assembled from measurements taken at numerous sampling stations distributed around the world. One such station is situated in Paramaribo, Suriname (5.8(N, 55.2(W) and operated by KNMI, in collaboration with Suriname Meteorological service (MDS), under the leadership of Dr. Ge. Verver. It was established in 1999 in order to help expand the network of such sampling stations located in the Tropical region of the globe. The site was strategically located so that it is in the middle of the migration range of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which moves with latitude depending on the time of year. In order to maximize the potential use of such data, contributions are routinely made to international networks such as NDACC, SHADOZ and WOUDC, allowing modelers and satellite scientists to use the data for validation purposes. Another important task is to provide vertical profiles of ozone and relative humidity by the use of ‘sondes’, which are instruments carried on balloons to heights up to ~30km above the surface. Examples of such profiles are shown in the Figure below which includes seven years of operational data. Recently, as part of the EU project STAR (Support for Tropical Atmospheric Research), a Raman Lidar system was also operated at the station in collaboration with Dr. F. Immler from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research Bremerhaven, Germany. The transport of water vapour and chemically reactive gases into the stratosphere mainly takes place in the tropics where convection is the strongest. However, the exact mechanism is still not well understood and is the subject of intense debate within the scientific community. It is believed that high tropical cirrus clouds play an important role, but onservations of these type of clouds are relatively scarce. The Raman lidar operated in Paramaribo is capable of detecting and characterizing such tropical cirrus clouds thus providing much needed data on this topic. A typical set of measurements for these lidar measurements is shown in Figure 2 below, which shows the amount of backscatter, and thus particle density, for altitudes up to 19km.

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See poster presented at SPARC RiiS 2007 here