We report a Compact Eye-Safe Backscatter Lidar (CESBL) system conceived for tropospheric aerosol research in the Arctic environment. The instrument will play an active role in the investigation of Arctic Haze and Ice Fog during winter time; intercontinental transport of Asian dust during springtime; and Aerosol plumes released from forest fires during summer time. In addition the system will perform systematic observations of Arctic Boundary Layer dynamics and Cirrus clouds. The lidar works at 1.574 μm and delivers 200 mJ maximum per pulse at 10 Hz prf. The output beam is conveniently expanded to yield an Eye-Safe factor greater than 250 suitable to operate in Urban Environments. The receiver is aimed with a Cassegrain telescope F/10, 20 cm primary diameter. The collimation and focusing were designed using commercial optics to holds approximately 1mrad field of view over a detector surface of 0.2 mm diameter. Signal detection is made by an InGaAs-APD followed by amplifiers. The Lidar system is mounted on an optical breadboard on a steerable platform and integrated into a PXI National Instrument data acquisition computer providing two acquisition channels at 200 MS/s maximum; 200 MHz of maximum bandwidth; and 12 bits vertical resolution. The acquisition code runs in a Lab-View platform with visualization interface and acquisition options optimized for field work. In this article the lidar system characteristics and the concept design are discussed. Initial geophysical results are shown.
This paper reviews the history and applications of the laser backscatter depolarization technique for atmospheric remote sensing. A relatively simple method, polarization diversity was among the earliest laser-radar (lidar) applications tested in the field, and soon proved to be uniquely suited for the study of the shape and orientation of hydrometeors, and hence the discrimination of water and ice clouds. More recent research has focused on atmospheric aerosols and the exotic clouds of the middle atmosphere, and on enhancing the information content of observations from lidars based on more sophisticated technologies. Various findings from polarization lidar research will be presented.
We report on fmdings from ongoing polarization lidar research at the University of Utah Facility for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (FARS). This facility was established in 1987, and the current total of lidar and radiometric measurements is ~2,9OO-h. Research at FARS has been applied to the climatological investigation of cirrus cloud properties for basic research and satellite measurement validation (currently in its 1 3th year), and studies of contrails, mixed phase clouds, and volcanic and Asian dust aerosols. Among the techniques utilized for monitoring cloud and aerosol properties are triple-wavelength linear depolarization measurements, and high (1 .5-rn by 10-Hz) resolution scanning observations. The usefulness of extended time lidar studies for atmospheric and climate research is illustrated.
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