Observation of boundary layer water vapor and aerosol structures with a compact airborne Raman lidar

A compact airborne Raman lidar (with a12 inch telescope and a laser of 65mj at 30 HZ) was developed and tested on Wyoming King Air during the KAPEE (Wyoming King Air PBL Exploratory Experiment, June 2010). The initial results show the airborne Raman lidar measurements offer many new insights on boundary water vapor and aerosol structure and processes, especially combined with in situ observations. Horizontal sharp transition of aerosol and water vapor across dry lines were observed during the KAPEE. The fine vertical and horizontal resolutions reveal never seeing detail dry line structure in the boundary layer. Examples of aerosols vertical and horizontal variations over Denver area will be also discussed by combining Raman lidar and in situ observations.