Observations of atmospheric water vapor, aerosol, and cloud with a Raman lidar

Abstract

To realize the improvement of signal-to-noise ratio and rejection rate for elastic Mie-Rayleigh signals, a set of dichroic mirrors and narrow-band interference filters with high efficiency was proposed to constitute a new spectroscopy for atmospheric water vapor, aerosol, and cloud studies. Based on the curves of signal-to-noise ratio at three different channels, the actual rejection rates of elastic Mie-Rayleigh signals at the Raman channels were found to be higher than eight orders of magnitude with the cloudy conditions. Continuous nighttime observations showed that the statistical error of the water vapor mixing ratio was <10% at a height of 2.3 km with an aerosol backscatter ratio of 17. Temporal variations of water vapor and aerosols were obtained under the conditions of cloud and cloud-free, the change relevance between aerosol and water vapor was analyzed, and the growth characteristics of water vapor and aerosols showed a good agreement within the cloud layers. Obtained results indicate achievement of the continuous detection of water vapor, aerosol, and cloud with a high efficiency and stability by Raman lidar.