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Rayleigh lidar system for middle atmosphere research in the arctic
Home
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Rayleigh lidar system for middle atmosphere research in the arctic
Rayleigh lidar system for middle atmosphere research in the arctic
Jeffrey P. Thayer
Jeffrey P. Thayer
NN
Norman B. Nielsen
Norman B. Nielsen
RW
Russell E. Warren
Russell E. Warren
CH
Craig J. Heinselman
Craig J. Heinselman
JS
Jens Sohn
Jens Sohn
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1 July 1997
journal article
Published by
SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng
in
Optical Engineering
Vol. 36
(7)
,
2045-2061
https://doi.org/10.1117/1.601361
Abstract
A Rayleigh/Mie lidar system deployed at the Sondrestrom Atmospheric Research Facility located on the west coast of Greenland near the town of Kangerlussuaq (67.0 deg N, 50.9 deg W) has been in operation since 1993 making unique observations of the arctic middle atmosphere. The vertically directed lidar samples the elastically backscattered laser energy from molecules (Rayleigh) and aerosols (Mie) over the altitude range from 15 to 90 km at high spatial resolution. The limited amount of arctic observations of the middle atmosphere currently available emphasizes the importance and utility of a permanent Rayleigh lidar system in Greenland. The lidar system consists of a frequency-doubled, 17-W Nd:YAG laser at 532 nm, a 92 cm Newtonian telescope, and a two-channel photon counting receiver. The principal objective of the lidar project is to contribute to studies concerned with the climatology and phenomenology of the arctic middle atmosphere. To this end, we describe the lidar system in detail, evaluate system performance, describe data analysis, and discuss the system capabilities in determining the density, temperature, and the presence of aerosols in the arctic middle atmosphere. Particular emphasis is placed on the derivation of temperature from the lidar measurement and on the impact of signal-induced noise on this analysis. Also, we develop a statistical filter based on a Bayesian approach to optimally smooth the lidar profile in range. This filter preserves the short-term fluctuations in the low-altitude data consisting of relatively high SNR, whereas more smoothing is applied to the high-altitude data as the SNR decreases. ©
1997 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.
Keywords
ALTITUDE
RAYLEIGH
MIDDLE ATMOSPHERE
OPTIMALLY
LIDAR SYSTEM
ARCTIC MIDDLE
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Cited by 40 articles