Abstract

The low-altitude section of the University of the West Indies, Mark II lidar system (Kent et al., 1971) was used to make observations on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the period February 1978 - November 1979. The system operates at a wavelength of 0.6943 μm and has a vertical resolution of 2 km over the height range 16-52 km. Approximately 90 useful nights' observations were obtained. Because the low latitude aerosol layer extends well above the ceiling of normal meteorological balloon soundings, this data has been normalized to a standard atmosphere over the altitude range 40-52 km. The standard atmosphere chosen is the Air Force Reference Atmosphere (Cole and Kantor, 1978) for the appropriate month and interpolated for the latitude of Kingston, Jamaica (18°N).