Potential of Lidars for Aerosol Remote Sensing

摘要

Measurements of aerosols are urgently required for understanding and modelling their role in the climate system and to investigate interactions between aerosols, clouds and radiation. Lidar is an excellent tool for aerosol observations, in particular, as it provides range resolved data. In this paper we briefly describe the different lidar configurations useful for aerosol observations and discuss in particular the limitations due to the unknown lidar ratio and strategies to overcome this problem. As a result, extinction coefficient as a function of height can be obtained. Recent approaches to derive microphysical parameters are introduced as well. The potential of lidars for aerosol remote sensing is illustrated by highlighting a few of the most important lidar activities of the last years and the upcoming spaceborne experiments.