A UV multifunctional Raman lidar system for the observation and analysis of atmospheric temperature, humidity, aerosols and their conveying characteristics over Xi'an

Abstract To monitor the variability and the correlation of multiple atmospheric parameters in the whole troposphere and the lower stratosphere, a ground-based ultraviolet multifunctional Raman lidar system was established to simultaneously measure the atmospheric parameters in Xi'an (34.233°N, 108.911°E). A set of dichroic mirrors (DMs) and narrow-band interference filters (IFs) with narrow angles of incidence were utilized to construct a high-efficiency 5-channel polychromator. A series of high-quality data obtained from October 2013 to December 2015 under different weather conditions were used to investigate the functionality of the Raman lidar system and to study the variability of multiple atmospheric parameters in the whole stratosphere. Their conveying characteristics are also investigated using back trajectories with a hybrid single-particle Lagrangian integrated trajectory model (HYSPLIT). The lidar system can be operated efficiently under weather conditions with a cloud backscattering ratio of less than 18 and an atmospheric visibility of 3 km. We observed an obvious temperature inversion phenomenon at the tropopause height of 17–18 km and occasional temperature inversion layers below the boundary layer. The rapidly changing atmospheric water vapor is mostly concentrated at the lower troposphere, below ∼4–5 km, accounting for ∼90% of the total water vapor content at 0.5–10 km. The back trajectory analysis shows that the air flow from the northwest and the west mainly contributes to the transport of aerosols and water vapor over Xi'an. The simultaneous continuous observational results demonstrate the variability and correlation among the multiple atmospheric parameters, and the accumulated water vapor density in the bottom layer causes an increase in the aerosol extinction coefficient and enhances the relative humidity in the early morning. The long-term observations provide a large amount of reliable atmospheric data below the lower stratosphere, and can be used to study their correlation and to improve local climate change research.

[1]  S. Milton,et al.  Impacts of increasing the aerosol complexity in the Met Office global NWP model , 2013 .

[2]  Ina Mattis,et al.  RAMSES: German Meteorological Service autonomous Raman lidar for water vapor, temperature, aerosol, and cloud measurements. , 2012, Applied optics.

[3]  Albert Ansmann,et al.  Relative-humidity profiling in the troposphere with a Raman lidar. , 2002, Applied optics.

[4]  R. Bar-Or,et al.  Relative humidity and its effect on aerosol optical depth in the vicinity of convective clouds , 2013 .

[5]  V E Zuev,et al.  Atmospheric temperature measurements using a pure rotational Raman lidar. , 1983, Applied optics.

[6]  Dengxin Hua,et al.  Ultraviolet high-spectral-resolution Rayleigh-Mie lidar with a dual-pass Fabry-Perot etalon for measuring atmospheric temperature profiles of the troposphere. , 2004, Optics letters.

[7]  J. Cooney,et al.  Measurement of Atmospheric Temperature Profiles by Raman Backscatter. , 1972 .

[8]  James R. Drummond,et al.  A Remotely Operated Lidar for Aerosol, Temperature, and Water Vapor Profiling in the High Arctic , 2012 .

[9]  A. Ansmann,et al.  Measurement of atmospheric aerosol extinction profiles with a Raman lidar. , 1990, Optics letters.

[10]  J. Reichardt,et al.  Atmospheric temperature profiling in the presence of clouds with a pure rotational Raman lidar by use of an interference-filter-based polychromator. , 2000, Applied optics.

[11]  O. Nielsen,et al.  Temperature and humidity dependence of secondary organic aerosol yield from the ozonolysis of β-pinene , 2007 .

[12]  David N Whiteman,et al.  New Examination of the Traditional Raman Lidar Technique II: Evaluating the Ratios for Water Vapor and Aerosols , 2013 .

[13]  Fan Yi,et al.  Atmospheric temperature measurements at altitudes of 5-30  km with a double-grating-based pure rotational Raman lidar. , 2014, Applied optics.

[14]  V. Simeonov,et al.  Simultaneous measurement of atmospheric temperature, humidity, and aerosol extinction and backscatter coefficients by a combined vibrational–pure-rotational Raman lidar , 2004 .

[15]  Renjian Zhang,et al.  Observation of biogenic secondary organic aerosols in the atmosphere of a mountain site in central China: temperature and relative humidity effects , 2013 .

[16]  V. Wulfmeyer,et al.  Scanning rotational Raman lidar at 355 nm for the measurement of tropospheric temperature fields , 2007 .

[17]  Andreas Behrendt,et al.  Combined Raman lidar for the measurement of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, particle extinction coefficient, and particle backscatter coefficient. , 2002, Applied optics.

[18]  Tao Li,et al.  Variation characteristics of water vapor distribution during 2000-2008 over Hefei (31.9°N, 117.2°E) observed by L625 lidar , 2015 .

[19]  A. Lomakin,et al.  Study of DNA internal dynamics by quasi-elastic light scattering. , 1997, Applied optics.

[20]  R. Draxler,et al.  NOAA’s HYSPLIT Atmospheric Transport and Dispersion Modeling System , 2015 .

[21]  T. Nagai,et al.  Comparisons of Raman Lidar Measurements of Tropospheric Water Vapor Profiles with Radiosondes, Hygrometers on the Meteorological Observation Tower, and GPS at Tsukuba, Japan , 2007 .

[22]  Thierry Leblanc,et al.  Ground-based water vapor raman lidar measurements up to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere for long-term monitoring , 2012 .

[23]  D. Melas,et al.  The impact of temperature changes on summer time ozone and its precursors in the Eastern Mediterranean , 2011 .

[24]  Volker Wulfmeyer,et al.  Temperature profiling of the atmospheric boundary layer with rotational Raman lidar during the HD(CP) 2 Observational Prototype Experiment , 2014 .