Provide a summary of Meso-scale aerosol field campaign research from dense distributions of remote sensing (RS) networks such as AERONET and related in situ and RS aerosol observations from surface, airborne and satellite platforms.

Recent aerosol field campaigns with AERONET have emphasized local to regional aerosol characterization for a variety of aerosol types, concentrations and meteorological regimes. The resulting networks called Distributed Regional Aerosol Gridded Observation Networks (DRAGON) are meso-scale short-term dense networks of sun and sky scanning photometers and ancillary observations established to characterize aerosol dynamics at a resolution commensurate with meso-scale aerosol processes. The DRAGON campaigns have been carried out successfully in the U.S. (Washington, D.C./Maryland, Texas and California), as well as in Asia including China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore and in Germany for the past several years. This special issue will emphasize results from these DRAGON campaigns and similar network data for aerosol process studies, aerosol–cloud interactions, regional radiative forcing, in-network retrieval comparisons and validations, in situ vs. remote sensing comparisons as well as satellite and airborne validations and comparisons.