Comparison between Backscatter Lidar and Radiosonde Measurements of the Diurnal and Nocturnal Stratification in the Lower Troposphere

Abstract

A collection of boundary layer heights has been derived from measurements performed by a groundbased backscatter lidar in Neuchâtel, Switzerland (47.000°N, 6.967°E, 485 m ASL). A dataset of 98 cases have been collected during 2 yr. From these data, 61 are noon and 37 are midnight cases. The following two different schemes were used to retrieve the mixed layer depth and the height of the residual layer from the measurements: the gradient and variance methods. The obtained values were compared with those derived from the potential temperature profiles as computed from radiosonde data. For nocturnal cases, the height of the first aerosol layer above the residual layer was also compared to the corresponding potential temperature value. Correlation coefficients between lidar and radiosonde in both convective and stable conditions are between 0.88 and 0.97.

Lidar-based remote sensing of atmospheric boundary layer height over land and ocean

“…Lidar provides direct measurements of aerosol profiles within the ABL. Several methods, such as the threshold method, gradient method, and variance method, have been developed to determine BLH by using lidar backscatter measurements (Hooper and Eloranta, 1986;Flamant et al, 1997;Menut et al, 1999;Sicard et al, 2006;Lammert and Bösenberg, 2006;Martucci et al, 2007;Emeis et al, 2008;Jordan et al, 2010;Haeffelin et al, 2012). However, the detected aerosol layers are not always consistent with ABL thermodynamical structures because aerosol vertical structures are affected by other factors.…”

“…First, local aerosol vertical distributions are influenced by horizontal transportation of aerosols besides vertical turbulence mixing. Second, the nighttime aerosol residual layer has weak linkages with ABL processes and it is hard to distinguish the ABL aerosol (Martucci et al, 2007;Baars et al, 2008;Ferrare et al, 2013), especially over land. Therefore, a careful evaluation of lidar-based BLH is needed in order to provide consistent BLH based on thermodynamical properties under different surface and thermal conditions.…”

Monitoring Depth of Shallow Atmospheric Boundary Layer to Complement LiDAR Measurements Affected by Partial Overlap

“…In particular, numerous studies have been performed to determine daytime convective boundary layer (CBL) topped by the clean, free atmosphere (FA). These studies used different techniques, namely threshold detection (e.g., [18]), the gradient-based method (e.g., [19]), the inflection point method (e.g., [20]), the variance analysis (e.g., [21]), the Haar wavelet approach (e.g., [14]), the combined wavelet and image processing method [22], the ideal profile method (e.g., [23]), and the 2-D gradient approach [24] to derive z i using aerosol LiDAR measurements.…”

Continuous monitoring of the boundary-layer top with lidar

“…3. Latest applications, comparisons and discussions of these methods can be found in Lammert and Bösenberg (2005), Martucci et al (2007), and Morille et al (2007). We contribute to this discussion by comparing the available methods for different aerosol and meteorological conditions.…”