Use of ceilometers for aerosol profile measurements: a comment from AD-Net

Abstract

Ceilometer instruments are simple backscatter lidar systems and are usually set in airports for detecting the base of clouds. The instrument can also measure aerosol vertical distribution. Since ceilometers barely detect the molecular backscatter signals, retrieval of aerosol optical properties is an issue. This study investigates applicability of ceilometers to retrieval of optical properties. We make an idealized signal profile with the lidar ratio of 50 sr and calculate the retrieval errors caused by 30% errors of lidar ratio. In the forward inversion, useable (small error) optical properties are backscattering coefficients and the retrieval errors are less than 15% if the aerosol optical depth (AOD) is less than 0.2. The initial backscattering coefficients must be determined from other instruments (e.g., multi-wavelength lidar). Whereas in the backward inversion, if the AOD of idealized signals is larger than 1.5, extinction coefficients converge to the true value (within 5% errors), regardless of lidar ratios and initial conditions. Since there is no need for the system constant or molecular backscatter in this method, ceilometers can be an effective tool for retrieving extinction coefficients of dense aerosols in East Asia.