EARLINET has been always proactive in developing knowledge about aerosol lidar technologies, methods and related science. Our knowledge is the base for ACTRIS aerosol remote sensing setup, but it goes well beyond that, tracking the lines for further developments, integration with other aerosol lidar networks in GALION-GAW framework, synergies with other techniques, and modelling and satellite communities.

Pillars of EARLINET knowledge are related to EARLINET aerosol lidar methodologies and data processing, and latest but not least data about 4d aerosol profiles on continental and long term scale.

In 2000, EARLINET started the activity providing a house for the research aerosol lidar data with a basic standard and a common data format. After almost 25 years the EARLINET database collects more than 156000 aerosol optical properties data files: a meaningful database for aerosol distribution investigation.
EARLINET focuses since the beginning on developments of methods for aerosol lidar techniques on the experimental side, developing tools and tests for checking the instruments and improving performances of the instruments.
Algorithms for aerosol lidar signal processing are developed, tested and intercompared in the framework of EARLINET. The main result of this wide activity is the implementation of the aerosol lidar Single Calculus Chain (SCC) and which is nowadays the ACTRIS centralized processing suite for aerosol remote sensing.