Abstract
We present, for the first time, a quantitative retrieval error-propagation study for a bistatic high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) system intended for detailed quasi-global monitoring of aerosol properties from space. Our results demonstrate that supplementing a conventional monostatic HSRL with an additional receiver flown in formation at a scattering angle close to 165° dramatically increases the information content of the measurements and allows for a sufficiently accurate characterization of tropospheric aerosols. We conclude that a bistatic HSRL system would far exceed the capabilities of currently flown or planned orbital instruments in monitoring global aerosol effects on the environment and on the Earth's climate. We also demonstrate how the commonly used a priori "regularization" methodology can artificially reduce the propagated uncertainties and can thereby be misleading as to the real retrieval capabilities of a measurement system.
Highlights
Atmospheric aerosols through their direct and indirect radiative effects cause significant uncertainties in our understanding and assessment of global climate change [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
1/2 range 1 0.2 0.29 0.15 20000 where α and β are, respectively, the extinction and backscattering coefficients derived from the traditional monostatic high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) measurement, while γi j are supplementary parameters obtained using the additional receiver in the bistatic lidar system
We presented for the first time a quantitative error-propagation study for a bistatic lidar system
Summary
Atmospheric aerosols through their direct and indirect radiative effects cause significant uncertainties in our understanding and assessment of global climate change [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The results of recent studies [13, 14] suggest that without strong a priori constraints the “3 β + 2α” dataset is underdetermined with respect to the full suite of requisite microphysical aerosol parameters and that additional coincident measurements are required in order to facilitate accurate retrievals In some cases such supplementary data could be provided by, e.g., a polarimeter [15]. An alternative methodology was outlined in a recent perspective [16] and contemplates flying one or more secondary receivers of scattered laser light on separate satellites in formation with the main platform carrying the HSRL Such receivers would measure the laser signals scattered by aerosol particles at different angles in addition to the exact backscattering direction, thereby providing supplementary information that can help better constrain the retrievals. An important byproduct of our study is the demonstration of a potentially misleading effect of invoking a priori constraints in assessing the likely accuracy of a retrieval methodology
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