The African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) was an international project to improve our knowledge and understanding of the West African monsoon (WAM), its variability on daily-to-interannual time scales, and its effects on the status of the atmosphere (Redelsperger et al., 2006). 
The experimental strategy of the AMMA program was based on embedded multi-year, seasonal and intensive observation periods (Janicot et al., 2008; Lebel et al., 2010). The observations used in this paper were conducted during the intensive observations periods, called Special Observing Periods (SOPs). The wintertime SOP (SOP0), was dedicated to the investigation of mineral dust and biomass burning, and their mixing, took place from 13 January and 13 February 2006. The summertime observations (periods SOP1 and SOP2) started on 31 May 2006 and ended on 17 July 2006 and were dedicated to the fine description of the interactions between aerosols and convection.
The ground-based observations were conducted at the AMMA supersite of Banizoumbou (13.5°N; 2.6°E, 250 m above sea level), located at a remote location at about 60 km east from the capital of Niger, Niamey (Figure 1). This site has been operational since the early 1990s, when the first measurements of soil erosion were performed on a cultivated field and a fallow (Rajot et al., 1995; Rajot, 2001). Since 1995, the site is also an Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) station measuring columnar aerosol optical properties. The ground-based site operations are fully described in Rajot et al. (2008).