Ultraviolet Raman lidar for high-accuracy profiling of aerosol extinction coefficient

An ultraviolet (UV) Raman lidar system at 354.7 nm has been developed for accurately measuring the aerosol extinction profiles. A spectroscopic filter combining a high-spectral-resolution grating with two narrowband mirrors is used to separate the vibrational Raman scattering signal of N2 at a central wave-length of 386.7 nm and the elastic scattering signal at 354.7 nm. The aerosol extinction is derived from the Raman scattering of N2 and the elastic scattering by the use of Raman method and Klett method, respectively. The derived results of aerosol extinction are used to compare the difference of two retrieval methods, and the preliminary experiment shows that the Raman lidar system operated in analog detection mode has the capability of measuring aerosol profiles up to a height of 3 km with a laser energy of 250 mJ and an integration time of 8 min.