Performance of backscatter visibility lidar at UYN airport

Backscatter visibility lidar has been installed at Yuyang (UYN) airport for precise measurements of visibility. The present study conducted the first experiments to compare visibility results of different measurement instruments involving backscatter visibility lidar. The present study introduced the system structure of the backscatter visibility lidar, and then compared the visibility data under different weather conditions viz., haze-fog, snow, dust and rain. The results of the backscatter visibility lidar are superior to the forward scatter meter in all kinds of weather conditions. The measurement results of the backscatter type visibility meter had little deviation from the transmissometer and the manual visual measurement under haze-fog weather. Under the rain and dust weather conditions, the deviation of the results measured by backscatter visibility lidar were larger than transmissometer and the manual observed, but the deviation was still less than the forward scatter visibility meter. The result should be confirmed by more experiments under different weather conditions.