On deriving the accurate aerosol extinction profiles in the troposphere and lower stratosphere using the range dependent scattering ratio

摘要

Lidar has proven to be an effective instrument for obtaining high resolution profiles of atmospheric aerosols. Deriving the optical properties of aerosols from the experimentally obtained lidar data is one of the most interesting and challenging task for the atmospheric scientists. A few methods had been developed so far, to obtain the quantitative profiles of extinction and backscattering coefficient of aerosols from the pulsed backscattering lidar measurements. Most of the existing inversion methods assume a range independent value for the scattering ratio for inverting the lidar signal even though it is known that the scattering ratio depends on the nature of aerosols and as such range dependent. We used a modified Klett's method for the inversion of lidar signal that uses range dependent scattering ratio (s) for the characterization of atmospheric aerosols. This method provides the constants k and s for all the altitude regions of the atmosphere and leads to derive the aerosol extinction profile for the lidar data. In this paper we made a study on the errors involved in the extinction profiles derived using the range dependent scattering ratio and discuss the approach in this regard to obtain the accurate extinction profiles.