HRDL and OPAL lidars aboard the R/V Brown during NEAQS 2004.


ABDIAL installed on the DC-3 during NEAQS 2004.

Lidar Development

Dr. Alan Brewer, Lead

This group develops new instruments for measuring winds, turbulence, cloud and aerosol properties, water vapor, and important atmospheric constituents such as ozone and carbon dioxide.

Significant accomplishments over the past few years include:

• demonstration of high resolution, solid state Doppler lidar for observing fine scale structure in the atmosphere,
• development of the first completely unattended cloud profiling lidar and one-year deployment of the system on the arctic icecap,
• demonstration of shipborne and airborne Doppler and water vapor lidar measurements,
• and remote measurements of ammonia concentrations.

Lidar has great promise for future observations from platforms such as unattended airborne vehicles or commercial airlines because the systems can be very compact. Current and projected research is aimed at development of a new aerosol lidar for air quality studies from the NOAA P-3, modifying the ETL high resolution Doppler lidar for airborne operation from the cabin or a fuel pod, demonstration of an unattended instrument for profiling lower tropospheric water vapor, development of tunable laser technology for a new airborne ozone instrument, and investigation of lidar techniques to measure atmospheric CO2.

Robert Banta, Raul Alvarez, and Lisa Darby along with eight colleagues from the Aeronomy Lab were given a group medal for the discovery of a previously unrecognized major factor that causes ozone pollution in the Houston, Texas area. More...