Development of ZJU high-spectral-resolution lidar for aerosol and cloud: Feature detection and classification

Abstract

A ground-based high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL), operated at 532 nm wavelength, has been developed at Zhejiang University (ZJU) for aerosols and clouds studies. This lidar provides vertical profiles of aerosol scattering ratio together with lidar ratio and particle depolarization ratio at 532 nm. These single wavelength HSRL observations can be used to automatically identify the features attributed to dust/polluted dust, urban/smoke, maritime aerosols, as well as ice and liquid water cloud during day and night. Developed algorithm was applied to extended data set obtained during field campaigns performed at coastal city Zhoushan and metropolis Hangzhou over eastern China. To evaluate the practical performance of feature detection, the obtained aerosol optical depth (AOD) from ZJU HSRL has been compared with that from the sun photometers and they agree very well (5.9% in terms of bias error). Also, aerosol classification obtained with presented algorithm agrees well with previous established literatures. Furthermore, based on our method and extensive data sets from ZJU HSRL, measurements performed over eastern China extend the database of aerosols especially with respect to urban and marine and dust near the Yangtze River Delta region.