**Acknowledgement**

The authors wish to acknowledge all the CALIPSO team for data obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric. They also gratefully acknowledge the team of AERONET sunphotometer network, CPTEC/INPE for the active fires and the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory for the provision of the HYSPLIT transport and dispersion model and READY website used in this publication. The first author wishes to acknowledge the financial support of Fundacao para o Amparo da Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo FAPESP under the project number 2011/14365-5. The secong author wish to acknowledge the Research Foundation of the State of Rio Grande do Sul and the post graduate program in Meteorology at the Federal University of Pelotas.
