Recent lidar developments to monitor stratosphere—troposphere exchange

Abstract

The simultaneous knowledge of temperature fluctuations and mean wind profiles allows the complete description of the gravity wave field. Such data have been obtained in the altitude region 30–80 km in the past few years by using the temperature from the Rayleigh lidar and the wind either from falling spheres or from the Doppler lidar. A newly developed rotational Raman lidar and the downward extension of the Doppler lidar method make available simultaneous temperature and wind measurements in the lower height range 0–30 km independently on the presence of aerosols or thin clouds. The continuous monitoring for periods of about 10 h duration would give access not only to the mean values but also to the temporal evolution of the temperature fluctuations characteristic of the gravity waves, and the dependence upon the mean wind through which the waves propagate. This paper presents the first results obtained by these two newly available techniques.