The use of an airborne lidar for mapping cirrus clouds in FIRE, phase 2

Abstract

The Univ. of Washington (UW) and Georgia Tech have recently built a dual wavelength airborne lidar for operation on the UW's Convair C-131A research aircraft. This lidar was used in studying aerosols and clouds. These studies demonstrated the utility of airborne lidar in a variety of atmospheric research and prompt the suggestion that this facility be included in the next FIRE cirrus experiment. The vertically pointing airborne lidar would be used as a complement to ground based lidars. The airborne lidar would ensure extended coverage of IFO cases that develop upwind of the surface lidars or which miss the ground based lidars while still being the focus of satellite and aircraft in situ studies. The airborne lidar would help assure that cirrus clouds were simultaneously viewed by satellite, sampled by aircraft, and structurally characterized by lidar. System specifications are listed and a schematic is shown of the lidar system aboard the C-131A