Resumen de Determination of backscatter ratio and depolarization ratio by mobile lidar measurements in support of EARTHCARE and AEOLUS missions

Dimitrios T. Kokkinos, Georgios Tzeremes, Errico Armandillo

• In preparation of the forthcoming ESA spaceborne lidar missions, ADM and EarthCARE, ESA support mobile lidar (ESMOL) has conducted a preliminary campaign to assess the impact of multi channel as well as multi instrument observation on the retrieval of key atmospheric parameters.

  This paper reports on a test campaign which was performed with ESMOL , supplemented with a Sunphotometer, for the measurement of the backscattering ratio and the depolarization ratio of low ‐ mid altitude aerosol clouds. A post‐processing code was developed in order to localise and integrate these parameters along cloud patterns, capable of generating an average overview of the aerosol characteristics. This campaign took place during a period of 8 months in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. ESMOL uses a Raman LIDAR (Raymetrics LR‐211‐UV‐D40) system transmitting at 355 nm and 532 nm, and simultaneously monitoring four channels, 355 nm polarized, 355 nm cross polarized, 387 nm and 532 nm. Its measurements were also post calibrated by a sun photometer with five filters at 340 nm, 380 nm, 500 nm, 936 and 1020 nm as well as data of daily weather conditions from meteorological databases.