Compact airborne Raman lidar for profiling aerosol, water vapor and clouds

Abstract

A compact airborne Raman lidar system, which can perform water vapor and aerosol measurements both during nighttime and daytime is described. The system design, setup and the data processing methods are described in the paper. The Raman lidar was tested on University of Wyoming King Air research aircraft (UWKA) during the Wyoming King Air PBL Exploratory Experiment (KAPEE) in 2010. An observation showing clouds, aerosols and a dry line is presented to illustrate the lidar detection capabilities. Comparisons of the water vapor and aerosol measurements using the Raman lidar and other in situ airborne instruments show good agreement.

Airborne Raman Lidar and its Applications for Atmospheric Process Studies

“…For single shot data from UWKA (cruising speed ~100 m/s), the system can provide 0.75 m vertical, ~3.5 m horizontal raw data. Different post-averaging can be done according to atmospheric features and applications [7].…”

“…The calibration of airborne Raman lidar can be done in two easy ways, which are more convenient than the calibration of ground-based Raman lidar systems. First, water vapor profiles within a small cloud free region collected from aircraft spiral descending or ascending can be use to compare with WCRL profile and to exam the overlap differences of between the water vapor and nitrogen Raman channels and to calibrate the system constant [7]. After knowing the short-range overlap difference, we can simply calibrate WCRL water vapor measurements or monitor calibration variations by comparing WCRL near aircraft measurements with in situ measurements.…”

Low-Pass Parabolic FFT Filter for Airborne and Satellite Lidar Signal Processing

“…For lidar signals, random noise is a high frequency component [ 4 , 6 , 9 ]. However, signals scattered by aerosol layers or clouds also have high frequency components [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. For processing the signals, it is a challenge to reduce the random noise of the signal while keeping as many of the real high frequency signal details as possible.…”

Mini N2-Raman Lidar Onboard Ultra-Light Aircraft for Aerosol Measurements: Demonstration and Extrapolation

“…Few studies have been performed with embedded Raman systems on aircrafts. All were focused on the measurement of the water vapor mixing ratio [24][25][26]. Methane and temperature were also measured by Heaps and Burris [24].…”

“…Methane and temperature were also measured by Heaps and Burris [24]. The only study dealing with aerosol measurements uses the N 2 -Raman channel to directly estimate the aerosol backscatter coefficient [26].…”