Cheap simple backscatter lidars may provide valuable information on atmospheric extinction profiles

The results compare very well with expensive Raman lidar extinction products. The novel methodology can be applied in cheap ground-based lidar systems, both during daytime and nighttime but also to space-borne lidar, like CALIPSO.

Over the past decade, solar photometers have been the most systematic method of recording atmospheric conditions. The quantities produced under different atmospheric conditions, refer to the total atmospheric column. This means that there is no separation between the properties of the particles of the boundary atmospheric layer that are usually affected by local sources and free tropospheric particles, which is often the result of long-distance particle transport. The same stands for passive satellite sensors, such as MODIS, MISR, etc., used to continuously record floating particles on a global scale.

Multiwavelength lidars are powerful instruments in atmospheric research for the profiling of the atmosphere. But they are complex and expensive, and mostly give aerosol extinction information only during nighttime.

Further information:

Dr. Giannakaki Elina, Finnish Meteorological Institute, tel. +358 50 408 8653, elina@phys.uoa.gr

Giannakaki, E., Kokkalis, P., Marinou, E., Bartsotas, N. S., Amiridis, V., Ansmann, A., and Komppula, M.: The potential of elastic and polarization lidars to retrieve extinction profiles, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 893–905, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-893-2020, 2020.