2.1
A Decade of Raman Lidar Water Vapor, Aerosol, and Cloud Observations at the ARM Southern Great Plains Site
D.D. Turner, SSEC/Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; and R. A. Ferrare, J. E. M. Goldsmith, D. Petty, M. B. Clayton, L. A. Brasseur, T. Tooman, Z. Wang, and J. M. Comstock
The U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program fielded the first automated turn-key Raman lidar to the ARM Southern Great Plains site in the summer of 1996. This lidar has collected nearly 50,000 hrs of data since its deployment in a wide variety of conditions (night/day, summer/fall/winter/spring, etc.). The primary objective for deploying this lidar was to observe water vapor at high temporal (10-min) and spatial (better than 100 m) resolution in the lower troposphere throughout the diurnal cycle and through the entire troposphere at night. In addition to these water vapor measurements and the corresponding analyses, we have also used data collected by this system to look at the vertical distribution of tropospheric aerosols and their properties. Significant upgrades in 2004 and 2005 have added new capabilities to this system. The first increased the signal-to-noise in most data channels by a factor of 10, allowing higher temporal and spatial resolution measurements. This upgrade also greatly improved the retrieval of cirrus extinction profiles. Additional channels were installed during the second upgrade that allows retrievals of temperature and ice water content profiles. This presentation will provide an overview of this lidar system, highlighting some key results from the last decade, and show some first results from the newly installed channels.
Session 2, Lidar Networks, Automated Operations, And Long Term Climate Observations
Tuesday, 16 January 2007, 11:00 AM-3:15 PM, 207B
Next paper