The paper describes a novel lidar method to measure the temperature between 5 and 30 km independently of the presence of aerosols, either because of their spectral contribution or their effect on extinction. The method is based on an idea proposed by Cooney (1972), which takes into account the temperature dependence of the Raman spectrum, and which was later used to measure the temperature between 0 and 2 km of altitude using the rotational Raman spectrum backscattered by molecular nitrogen. It is shown that, under certain instrument conditions, the function which makes it possible to calibrate the lidar does not depend on pressure, which implies that the same function can be used at all altitudes, without causing an unacceptable error in temperature measurement. Results obtained with this technique agree with radiosondes within 0.5 K between the ground and 20-25 km.

Date Published: 17 December 1992
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 1714, Lidar for Remote Sensing, (17 December 1992); doi: 10.1117/12.138532

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1714:
Lidar for Remote Sensing
Richard J. Becherer; Christian Werner, Editor(s)