Rayleigh/raman Lidars: Intercomparisons and Validation

Abstract

Vertical sounding of the atmosphere by Rayleigh lidar was exclusively used in France to study the structure, the dynamics as well as the long term trend of the middle atmosphere. More recently, the addition of a rotational-Raman mode fills the gap between the ground and 30 km in such a way that the whole altitude range from ground up to 90-100 km can be studied with a unique instrument. The growing need of absolute measurement of temperature with high precision for climatic purpose led us to perform critical review of all the sources of error which can occur in this type of measurement. This is the subject of a recent paper which shows that the increase of the performances of the instrument in the last decade was successfully obtained without compromising the accuracy. It is briefly reviewed. Concern is with the presentation of the recent improvements of the technique and of the results of intercomparisons and validation of new satellites data.