A compact Raman LIDAR system for remote sensing of sea and drifting ice was developed at the Wave Research Center at the Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the RAS. The developed system is based on a diode pumped solid state YVO 4 :Nd laser combined with compact spectrograph equipped with gated detector. The system exhibits high sensitivity and can be used for mapping or depth profiling of different parameters within many oceanographic problems. Light weight (~20 kg) and low power consumption OCIS codes: 280.3640, 280.4788, 300.6450
IntroductionThe interest to the research in the Arctic Ocean and polar areas has been increasing in the last decades due to the growing needs for oil and gas production and to the fact that the Arctic region is a sensitive global climate indicator. Continuous diagnostics of human activity influence on the ecology and global climate changes are the most pressing goals for research in all countries located in the Arctic region. Depending on the research goals different techniques can be used for laboratory measurements while monitoring of vast areas can be carried out only by remote sensing [1][2][3]. Human activity influence on ecology can be traced by pollution detection: oil [4][5][6], chemicals or heavy metals in the ocean water [7,8]. If chemical contamination of sea is of the primary interest i.e. for ecology applications then remote detection by laser fluorescence [9] or by laser induced breakdown spectroscopy can be carried out [10][11][12][13]. Global climate change is studied on the basis of the temperature and chlorophyll distribution in the Arctic Ocean using remote methods: spaceborne radars [1,14,15], airborne microwave and laser scatterometers [16][17][18][19].
3The Arctic Ocean is an excellent region for revealing climate changes and at the same time the Arctic Ocean has a strong influence on the climate. In the northern regions, the ice study is of the great interest due to the fact that ice serves as an effective interface between the ocean and the atmosphere, restricting exchange of heat, mass, momentum and chemical constituents. Detailed study of the global climate system and prediction of future climate changes can be made only if reliable data on different physical parameters of water and ice are available. These parameters include water and ice temperature, salinity, ice surface roughness, optical and thermodynamic properties of the snow cover, and the presence of liquid water above ice, which frequently occurs in summer when ice and snow melt at the ice surface.Conventional techniques for temperature detection include spaceborne radiometer radars [1], airborne microwave and laser scatterometers. However, temperature detection by satellite radiometer is performed in a thin 30 µm surface layer of seawater. It was found that under low speed wind conditions the temperature of surface layer was by 0.5 -1 0 C lower than in the water column [20]. The temperature detected by radars can be strongly influenced by surface waves.Frazil or grease ice can significantl...