Measurement of tropospheric aerosol in Sao Paulo area using a new upgraded Raman LIDAR system

摘要

Elastic backscatter LIDAR systems have been used to determine aerosol profile concentration in several areas such as weather, pollution and air quality monitoring. In order to determine the aerosol extinction and backscattering profiles, the Klett inversion method is largely used, but this method suffers from lack of information since there are two unknown variables to be determined using only one measured LIDAR signal, and assumption of the LIDAR ratio (the relation between the extinction and backscattering coefficients) is needed.When a Raman LIDAR system is used, the inelastic backscattering signal is affected by aerosol extinction but not by aerosol backscatter, which allows this LIDAR to uniquely determine extinction and backscattering coefficients without any assumptions or any collocated instruments. The MSP-LIDAR system, set-up in a highly dense suburban area in the city of Sao Paulo, has been upgraded to a Raman LIDAR, and in its actual 6-channel configuration allows it to monitor elastic backscatter at 355 and 532 nm together with nitrogen and water vapor Raman backscatters at 387nm and 608 nm and 408nm and 660 nm, respectively. Thus, the measurements of aerosol backscattering, extinction coefficients and water vapor mixing ratio in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) are becoming available. The system will provide the important meteorological parameters such as Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and will be used for the study of aerosol variations in lower troposphere over the city of Sao Paulo, air quality monitoring and for estimation of humidity impact on the aerosol optical properties, without any a priori assumption. This study will present the first results obtained with this upgraded LIDAR system, demonstrating the high quality of obtained aerosol and water vapor data. For that purpose, we compared the data obtained with the new MSP-Raman LIDAR with a mobile Raman LIDAR collocated at the Center for Lasers and Applications, Nuclear and Energy Research Institute in Sao Paulo and radiosonde data from Campo de Marte Airport, in Sao Paulo.