Raman lidar measurements of tropospheric ozone
Document ID: 165
Collier, Paul Jason1
Unni, Sameer1
Verghese, Sachin John1
Willitsford, Adam H.1
Philbrick, C. Russell1
Clark, Richard D.2
Doddridge, Bruce G.3
1 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, U.S.A.
2 Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Department of Earth Sciences, Millersville, PA, U.S.A.
3 University of Maryland, Department of Meteorology, College Park, MD, U.S.A.
Abstract
Investigations of air quality are important in many applications, as well as in assessing how healthy the air is for humans to breathe. The most common methods used in atmospheric studies involve ground based instruments, tethersonde balloons, and aircraft. The problems in these data arise from the limitations in the instruments making the measurements. Although tethersondes do provide an opportunity to obtain vertical profiles of many important properties in the lower troposphere, their altitude is restricted, and their operations are limited due to high wind speeds. These balloons are also rather manpower intensive, and therefore costly. Aircraft are very useful in examining variations over regional scales, but they require good visibility for flight conditions, and they cannot be used continuously due to the expense of those operations. Ground based instruments simply do not have the capability of vertical profiling, and therefore an important dimension of understanding is lost. This paper shows how vertical profiling using remote sensing techniques, such as those obtained by the Lidar Atmospheric Profile Sensor (LAPS) instrument, provides a better understanding of atmospheric properties and improves our understanding of meteorological processes. It also shows that LAPS data corresponds well to data taken from other instruments. Specifically, ozone measurements obtained during the 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2002 Northeast Oxidant and Particle Study (NEOPS) campaigns are examined.
| Citation: | "Raman lidar measurements of tropospheric ozone", Collier, P. J., S. Unni, S. J. Verghese, A. H. Willitsford, C. R. Philbrick, R. D. Clark, B. G. Doddridge, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, American Meteorological Society, Section: 6.3, 2003, pp. 1 - 4 |