Instrumental correction of the uneven PMT aging effect on the calibration constant of a water vapor Raman lidar

The water vapor profile derived from Raman lidar measurements is obtained by taking the ratio of water vapor and nitrogen Raman-shifted signals. The proportionality factor that converts the signal ratio to water vapor/air mixing ratio is referred to as lidar calibration constant. The calibration constant depends on the water vapor and nitrogen Raman cross sections and on the efficiencies of the respective Raman channels including the photomultiplier tube (PMT) efficiency. Unequal, gradual changes in the PMTs efficiencies due to fatigue effects may lead to gradual alteration of the calibration constant. Such an effect has been observed during the seven-year continuous operation of the RAman Lidar for Moisture Observations (RALMO)(1). A more detailed research(2), has shown that the calibration constant change is more pronounced during summer time probably due to the higher light exposure. Periodical recalibration of the lidar with radiosonde measurements is used to correct the calibration constant. This approach, however, induces additional systematic errors due to the nature of the calibration procedure and the dispersion of the radiosonde parameters. We present a new, instrumental method for automated correction of the calibration constant. By this method, a correction factor is deduced from the ratio of the signals of the two photomultipliers which are illuminated simultaneously by a single, stabilized UV-LED light source. The LED light is delivered to the photomultipliers by a set of additional mirrors and a beam splitter installed inside the grating polychromator used to separate the Raman signals. The correction measurements are taken before midnight. To minimize the data loss, the lidar's laser is operated during the measurements and a shatter at the polychromator entrance is used to block any atmospheric signals. The use of stabilized light source also allows evaluating the individual photomultipliers aging rates, essential for the instrument maintenance.

Automated Raman Lidar for Day and Night Operational Observation of Tropospheric Water Vapor for Meteorological Applications

Todor Dinoev

Water vapor is a fundamental constituent of the atmosphere and is the most abundant green house gas thus having an important influence on climate. It is as well a key prognostic variable for numerical weather prediction models (NWP). Currently, the vertical profiles of tropospheric water vapor are provided by twice a day radiosondes. The routine observations have rather low temporal resolution that is insufficient to resolve fast-running meteorological phenomena. The aim of the thesis work was to design and build a Raman lidar instrument capable of continuous vertical profiling of tropospheric water vapor field with high temporal and vertical resolution. The provided observations will improve the database available for direct meteorological applications and could increase the accuracy of numerical weather prediction. RALMO – RAman Lidar for Meteorological Observations is developed as fully automated, eye-safe instrument for operational use by the Swiss meteorological service – MeteoSwiss. The lidar is able to provide vertical profiles of water vapor mixing ratio with time resolution from 5 to 30 min and vertical resolution from 15 m in boundary layer and 75 – 500 m in free troposphere. The daytime vertical operational range of the lidar extends from about 50 m to mid-troposphere and the detection limit is 0.5 g/kg. In night-time conditions the vertical operational range extends up to the tropopause with 0.01 g/kg detection limit. To allow daytime operation with extended vertical range and required detection limit the lidar is designed with narrow field-of-view receiver, narrow band detection, and it uses high pulse power laser with wavelength in the UV but out of solar blind region. The lidar transmitter uses flash-lamps pumped frequency tripled Nd: YAG laser generating 8 ns pulses with 0.3 J energy and 355 nm wavelength. To reduce the beam irradiance, required for eye-safe operation, and to reduce the divergence required for narrow field of view receiver, the laser beam is expanded by 15x refractive type expander. The backscattered laser light is collected by four 30 cm in diameter telescopes with focal length of 1 m. For better long term alignment stability the telescopes are tightly arranged around the beam expander in compact assembly. The field-of-view of the telescopes is reduced to 0.2 mrad to decrease the collected sky-scattered sunlight thus allowing daytime measurements up to mid troposphere. Fibers transmit the light collected by the telescopes to the lidar polychromator. Fiber coupling was preferred against free space connection because it separates the units mechanically and increases the overall lidar stability. In addition the fibers perform aperture scrambling which prevents range dependence of the receiver parameters. An additional "near range" fiber is installed in one of the telescopes to enhance the near range signal and to allow daytime measurements starting from approximately 50 m above the lidar. A high throughput diffraction grating polychromator is designed for narrow band isolation of water vapor, nitrogen, and oxygen Q branches of ro-vibrational Raman spectra. Water vapor mixing ratio is derived from the ratio of water vapor to nitrogen Raman signals and the oxygen signal is used to correct for aerosol differential extinction at water and nitrogen wavelengths. The water vapor detection channel passband is 0.3 nm. The narrow band detection increases the lidar sensitivity and operational range in daytime conditions. For maximum throughput of the polychromator, the exit and entrance slits are matched and the polychromator entrance accepts the divergent beam from the fibers without losses. Photomultipliers at the exit of the polychromator detect the Raman lidar signals, which are then acquired by transient recorders (Licel). The signals are simultaneously recorded in analog and photon-counting modes. The analog signals are used in daytime conditions with sky background signal that saturates completely the photon counter, whereas in night-time conditions, photon counting signals are used. Two computers provide for the automated operation of the lidar instrument. The first one controls all lidar units relevant to the lidar operation, including the laser and the data acquisition. For this purpose, Lidar Automat software has been developed under LabView and requires only activation by an operator. Automated data treatment software, developed under Matlab, is run on the second lidar computer. It reads the initial lidar data, treats them, and stores the final result in files ready for upload to the meteorological service. The files contain vertical profiles of water vapor mixing ratio and relative error. The lidar was completed in July 2007 and installed at the aerological station of MeteoSwiss in Payerne. Since October 2007 the lidar has been in experimental operation and the software for automated data treatment was completed. Since September 2008 the instrument has been fully operational, providing continuous vertical water vapor mixing ratio profiles uploaded to MeteoSwiss every 30 min. Regular comparisons with Vaisala RS-92 and Snow White® radiosondes were performed during the experimental lidar operation at Payerne. Long-term stability study of the calibration coefficient was performed as well.

EPFL2009

Ozone and water vapor measurements by Raman lidar in the planetary boundary layer

The temporal and spatial retrieve of ozone (O3) concentration and water vapor (H2O) mixing ratio in the troposphere is of essential interest. Contrary to the stratospheric case, the tropospheric ozone can have a harmful impact, with its toxic effect, on humans and vegetation, accelerating the degradation of the minerals and participating in the green-house problem. Concerning the water vapor, knowledge of its highly variable concentration is essential to both the chemistry of the troposphere (O(1D) + H2O —> 2 OH) where it participates, among others, in the generation of the hydroxyl radical (OH) and to the meteorology. Water vapor is the dominant green-house gas, it plays an important role in the atmospheric chemistry. The conversion and transport of water in the atmosphere is the essential point in the earth's radiation budget. Due to the complexity and the non-linearity of the air pollution system including emissions, chemistry, thermal radiation, transport and deposition, pollution abatement strategies can only be designed rightly by the use of a three-dimensional mesoscale Eulerian photochemical transport model. To check such models, measurement campaigns are undertaken, in which many physical (wind, temperature, H2O, etc.) and chemical parameters (emissions and imissions) are measured at different parts of the atmosphere. LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging), which is a real-time method for measuring air pollutants in situ, is one of the best tools to make 3-D measurements of gases concentrations like O3, H2O and others. Contrary to the ground based measurements that are highly sensitive to the very local conditions, lidar sensitivity and resolution in space and time is optimal to obtain measurements and to compare or give some input data for the models. During the last thirty years, (elastic backscatter) Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) has been established as a convenient tool for the monitoring of the three dimensional real time concentrations of air pollutants [Measures, 1992], [Schoulepnikoff et al., 1998]. But the DIAL apparatus has shown limitations: — the operation in layers with high aerosol loading like in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) where they are highly variable — the simultaneous detection of several atmospheric components or pollutants is impossible [Bösenberg, 1996] — the detection at short range is difficult due to the high dynamics. Furthermore, due to its spectrum and the strong influence from other elements, the water vapor can not be easily measured in the UV with classical DIAL systems. The goal of this work was to develop a method to simultaneously measure the ozone absolute concentration and the water vapor mixing ratio in the PBL. Experiments with Nd : YAG and KrF lasers were made and utilization of both analog and photon counting techniques, increasing the dynamic range, were investigated. To retrieve the ozone concentration profile, we take advantage of the simultaneous spontaneous Raman backscattering on the molecules of nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) that have different ozone absorption cross-sections. Thus with a modified DIAL technique, the ozone concentration can be measured without most of the interference from poorly known backscatter by particles. Water vapor mixing ratio profile can also be obtained with a set of three Raman backscattered signals, simultaneously detected, from the molecules of H2O, N2 and O2. The main advantage of this Raman system is its essential independence to the wavelength dependent backscatter problems as induced by aerosols, and the fact that the N2 and O2 concentrations are well known as well as the Raman cross-sections of interest. Although the Raman cross-sections are two or three orders of magnitude lower than the elastic backscattering cross-sections, they are compensated by the proportionally much higher concentrations of O2, N2 and H2O compared to trace gases like O3. The development of the Raman — DIAL method for atmospheric measurements in the PBL presents several challenges. One is the development of highly-sensitive lidar systems, in particular the optical receiver, the spectrometer and the signal acquisition for the Raman part of the Raman-DIAL system. Also the data processing procedure for simultaneous evaluation of the ozone and the water vapor profiles. Both of these challenges present a number of issues, theoretical and practical, that are investigated in the frame of this work.

EPFL2001

Land-Atmosphere Interactions Measured with Raman Lidar

Martin Froidevaux

The EPFL water vapor and temperature scanning solar blind Raman lidar is a research tool developed for atmospheric boundary layer studies. The lidar has raw spatial and temporal resolutions of 1.25 meters and 1 second respectively and offers a new vision of the atmosphere. This study is dedicated to the validation of its design and investigates some of the potential applications and capacities of such a remote sensing technique. The use of four telescopes is evaluated with preliminary indoor experiments. The calibration of the system, obtained with point sensors along the beam is necessary to retrieve the absolute values of water vapor mixing ratio and temperature. The accuracy of water vapor measurement is below 0.32 g/kg with 2 min by 3.75 m averaged signals, from 15 up to 500 meters. The temperature measurements needs more work to be fully satisfying. The quality of the lidar data is verified with a signal to noise ratio threshold method. In order to test the lidar ability to detect various atmospheric boundary layer phenomena, three sites are studied with different scanning strategies. Vertical soundings and scans allow the measurement of stable atmospheric situations as well as low level clouds, front passages, convective cells, nocturnal jets and internal boundary layers. Street canyon effect and coherent patterns of humidity are studied with horizontal soundings. The different analysis performed support the hypothesis that coherent structures in the humidity time-space field are signatures of low-speed fluid cores induced by nested packets of hairpin vortices. It is the first time that such observations are reported with lidar measurements. Comparing the energy spectra from lidar and eddy covariance system measurements allows for the definition of the smallest turbulent scales that the lidar can confidently detect in a static orientation. Such scales range from 14 to 25 seconds below 150 meters from the light source and support the use of lidar measurements to retrieve fluxes.

EPFL2010