Atmospheric radiative forcing, surface radiation budget, and top-of-the-atmosphere radiance interpretation involve knowledge of the vertical height structure of overlying cloud and aerosol layers. During the last decade, the U.S. Department of Energy, through the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, has constructed four long-term atmospheric observing sites in strategic climate regimes (north-central Oklahoma; Barrow, Alaska; and Nauru and Manus Islands in the tropical western Pacific). Micropulse lidar (MPL) systems provide continuous, autonomous observation of nearly all significant atmospheric clouds and aerosols at each of the central ARM facilities. These systems are compact, and transmitted pulses are eye safe. Eye safety is achieved by expanding relatively low-powered outgoing pulse energy through a shared, coaxial transmit/receive telescope. ARM MPL system specifications and specific unit optical designs are discussed. Data normalization and calibration techniques are presente... Abstract Atmospheric radiative forcing, surface radiation budget, and top-of-the-atmosphere radiance interpretation involve knowledge of the vertical height structure of overlying cloud and aerosol layers. During the last decade, the U.S. Department of Energy, through the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, has constructed four long-term atmospheric observing sites in strategic climate regimes (north-central Oklahoma; Barrow, Alaska; and Nauru and Manus Islands in the tropical western Pacific). Micropulse lidar (MPL) systems provide continuous, autonomous observation of nearly all significant atmospheric clouds and aerosols at each of the central ARM facilities. These systems are compact, and transmitted pulses are eye safe. Eye safety is achieved by expanding relatively low-powered outgoing pulse energy through a shared, coaxial transmit/receive telescope. ARM MPL system specifications and specific unit optical designs are discussed. Data normalization and calibration techniques are presente...

The new Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) has been built for use on the NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft. The purpose of the CPL is to provide multiwavelength measurements of cirrus, subvisual cirrus, and aerosols with high temporal and spatial resolution. The CPL utilizes state-of-the-art technology with a high repetition rate, a low-pulse-energy laser, and photon-counting detection. The first deployment for the CPL was the Southern African Regional Science Initiative’s 2000 field campaign during August and September 2000. We provide here an overview of the instrument and initial data results to illustrate the measurement capability of the CPL.

Accurate knowledge of cloud optical properties, such as extinction-to-backscatter ratio and depolarization ratio, can have a significant impact on the quality of cloud extinction retrievals from lidar systems because parameterizations of these variables are often used in nonideal conditions to determine cloud phase and optical depth. Statistics and trends of these optical parameters are analyzed for 4 yr (2003–07) of cloud physics lidar data during five projects that occurred in varying geographic locations and meteorological seasons. Extinction-to-backscatter ratios (also called lidar ratios) are derived at 532 nm by calculating the transmission loss through the cloud layer and then applying it to the attenuated backscatter profile in the layer, while volume depolarization ratios are computed using the ratio of the parallel and perpendicular polarized 1064-nm channels. The majority of the cloud layers yields a lidar ratio between 10 and 40 sr, with the lidar ratio frequency distribution centered at 25 sr for ice clouds and 16 sr for altocumulus clouds. On average, for ice clouds the lidar ratio slightly decreases with decreasing temperature, while the volume depolarization ratio increases significantly as temperatures decrease. Trends for liquid water clouds (altocumulus clouds) are also observed. Ultimately, these observed trends in optical properties, as functions of temperature and geographic location, should help to improve current parameterizations of extinction-to-backscatter ratio, which in turn should yield increased accuracy in cloud optical depth and radiative forcing estimates.