D. Nicolae, L. Belegante, A. Nemuc, Laser remote sensing in atmosphere investigation, Optoelectron. Adv. Mater. – Rapid Comm., 4/12 (2010) 1946-1951.

Title: Laser remote sensing in atmosphere investigation

Abstract: One of the main issues at the Romanian Atmospheric 3D research Observatory - RADO refers to direct and indirect effect of aerosols on radiative budget. Vertically resolved profiles of optical properties of aerosols and ozone are measured each day by lidars. First information which can be immediately extracted is the vertical structure of the atmosphere. In this study, the multi-wavelength Raman lidar is used to observe significant variations in aerosol characteristics depending on the particle origins. The height of layers in the lower troposphere is calculated using the gradient method - minima of the first derivative – of the range corrected lidar signal. Optical properties of aerosols are derived in order to assess the aerosol class, which is then confirmed or not by air mass backward trajectory analysis.

Key words: LIDAR, Atmosphere, Long-range transport