Abstract

Until recently establishing numbers of continuously operating lidar systems to monitor all cloud and aerosol structure of the atmosphere would have meant large manned instruments and would be largely beyond the realm of feasibility. A program is now in progress for such full time atmospheric monitoring. The development of compact, eyesafe, low cost automated lidar systems that we have called Micro Pulse Lidar (MPL) is the enabling factor.^1,2 The basis of the MPL instruments is a highly photon efficient design which utilizes advanced solid state components. The first MPL field instrument began operation in 1992 and in 1993 was put into full time use at the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program site in Oklahoma. The initial instrument was capable of detecting all clouds and some aerosol structure on a full time basis. An improved instrument was introduced last year which has significantly higher performance and is now at the Oklahoma ARM site. Copies of the instrument are being deployed to five or more field sites around the globe. These instruments will provide a unique view of cloud and aerosol structure for the atmosphere. In this paper we discuss the improvements in the instrument design, the data that the systems are producing and analysis techniques and initial results from the data.

© 1997 Optical Society of America