A Remotely Operated Lidar for Aerosol, Temperature, and Water Vapor Profiling in the High Arctic

A Rayleigh-Mie-Raman lidar has been installed and is operating in the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory at Eureka in the High Arctic (79 degrees 59'N, 85 degrees 56'W) as part of the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change. The lidar operates in both the visible and ultraviolet and measures aerosol backscatter and extinction coefficients, depolarization ratio, tropospheric temperature, and water vapor mixing ratio. Variable field of view, aperture, and filtering allow fine-tuning of the instrument for different atmospheric conditions. Because of the remote location, operations are carried out via a satellite link. The instrument is introduced along with the measurement techniques utilized and interference filter specifications. The temperature dependence of the water vapor signal depends on the filter specifications, and this is discussed in terms of minimizing the uncertainty of the water vapor mixing ratio product. Finally, an example measurement is presented to illustrate the potential of this instrument for studying the Arctic atmosphere.