Method to detect molecular ranges in elastic lidar signal

Abstract

A method to detect aerosol plumes or clouds from an elastic lidar signal is presented, as well the determination of the atmospheric boundary layer height. It is based on the Rayleigh-fit concept, where the range-corrected elastic lidar signal is fitted with a pure-Rayleigh range-corrected lidar signal formed by radiosonde data. To run the algorithm, only temporal averaging has to be taken into account, and only one input parameter is needed. An analysis of the method is performed using real lidar data from different lidar system, showing the results and its limitations.