Aerosol Remote Sensing
Aerosol remote sensing systems are used to measure the vertical distribution of aerosols and clouds — including height, backscatter and extinction profiles. This vertical information is valuable because many remote sensing approaches only retrieve column integrals (e.g., aerosol optical depth) and cannot provide detailed height information. Knowing where aerosols are in the vertical is critical for understanding boundary layer effects and long-range transport.
ENVEA-APAQ team works directly with scientists developing the Lidar and Photometers for NASA's MPLNet and Aeronet networks, and supports scientists and meteorologists in the Asia Pacific region.
MiniMPL Lidar
he Mini Micro Pulse LiDAR (MiniMPL) is a small form factor, low-power, elastic backscatter lidar. The instrument is a ground-based, optical, remote-sensing system designed to determine the altitude of clouds and to detect atmospheric aerosols. Pulses of energy are transmitted into the atmosphere; the energy scattered back to the transceiver is collected and measured as a time-resolved signal, thereby detecting clouds and aerosols in real time. MPL and MiniMPL are the only LiDARs simultaneously approved for NASA MPLNET, US Dept of Energy ARM program, and EUMETNET.
The powerful MPL software suite is included with every purchase of a MPL or MiniMPL system and allows operation in data acquisition mode or playback mode.
Data acquisition mode:
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Set lidar operation parameters such as laser energy, integration time,or range resolution.
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Generate the raw data profile, r-squared corrected profile, normalized relative backscatter (NRB) profile,housekeeping data,and cloud/aerosol/boundary layer information in real time.