Three-wavelength Lidar System Research Articles

Airborne three-wavelength LiDAR system

Airborne three-wavelength LiDAR system

Measurements of cirrus clouds with a three-wavelength lidar

A three-wavelength lidar system is set up. The backscatter signals of 355, 532, and 1 064 nm are measured simultaneously to derive the optical depth, lidar ratio, and backscatter color ratio of cirrus clouds, respectively. The lidar configuration and the data processing are described. The case study shows that the optical depths of cirrus clouds are not dependent on wavelength while the backscatter color ratios are.

Scanning lidar with a coupled radar safety system

A small scanning three-wavelength lidar system at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has been used since 1992 to make atmospheric measurements on stratospheric and upper tropospheric aerosols and on the evolution of aircraft exhaust plumes. Many of these measurements have been made away from the zenith, and, to reduce the hazard to air traffic produced by the laser beam, a radar safety device has been installed. The radar application is original in that the radar beam is made collinear with the laser beam by use of a dichroic mirror that transmits the laser radiation and reflects the microwaves. This mirror is inserted into the outgoing optical path prior to the radiation from both the radar and the laser passing through the independent scanning unit. Tests of the complete system show that the lidar and radar beams remain collocated as they are scanned and that the radar can be used to inhibit the laser prior to an aircraft passing through the beam.

Light scattering characteristics of various aerosol types derived from multiple wavelength lidar observations

The present study demonstrates the potential of a multiple wavelength lidar for discriminating between several aerosol types such as maritime, continental, stratospheric, and desert aerosols on the basis of wavelength dependence of the aerosol backscatter coefficient. In the analysis of lidar signals, the two-component lidar equation was solved under the assumption of similarity in the derived profiles of backscatter coefficients for each wavelength, and this made it possible to reduce the uncertainty in the extinction/backscatter ratio, which is a key parameter in the lidar solution. It is shown that a three-wavelength lidar system operating at 300, 600, and 1064 nm can provide unique information for discriminating between various aerosol types such as continental, maritime, Saharan dust, stratospheric aerosols in a tropopause fold event, and tropical forest aerosols. Measurement error estimation was also made through numerical simulations. Mie calculations were made using in situ aerosol data and aerosol models to compare with the lidar results. There was disagreement between the theoretical and empirical results, which in some cases was substantial. These differences may be partly due to uncertainties in the lidar data analysis and aerosol characteristics and also due to the conventional assumption of aerosol sphericity for the aerosol Mie calculations.