A new mobile and portable scanning lidar for profiling lower troposphere
Abstract. We present and discuss on an indigenously developed mobile and portable 3-D scanning lidar system. The system utilizes a stimulated Raman-scattering technique for the continuous observation of atmospheric aerosols, clouds and trace gases. The system provides fast scanning technique with a high speed data acquisition, which permits the real-time measurement of air pollutant mobility. The temporal resolution of data retrieval is every one min. The scanning lidar system provides typical horizontal coverage of about 8–10 km when scanning, while the vertical range can be up to 20 km depending upon the laser power and sky conditions. This versatile lidar system has also overcome the drawbacks which are popular in the other scanning lidar system such as complicated operation; overlapping height between laser beam and telescope field of view; and damage of optic detectors for long duration measurement by using an integral coaxial transmitter and receiver. Some of the initial results obtained from the scanning lidar system are also presented. We have shown that the developed 3-D scanning lidar system can resolve the boundary layer structure and land-sea breeze circulation. Discussion is also made on the application of scanning lidar system to measure pollutant over industrial areas.