The EarthCARE mission, sixth Earth Explorer Mission of the ESA Living Planet Programme, is developed in cooperation with JAXA. It addresses the interaction and impact of clouds and aerosols on the Earth's radiative budget. For the first time, a suite of four complementary instruments will make simultaneous observations of the same cloud/aerosol scene. ATLID, the Atmospheric backscatter LIDar will determine vertical profiles of cloud and aerosol physical parameters (altitude, optical depth, backscatter ratio and depolarisation ratio) in synergy with the cloud profiling radar provided by JAXA, the multi spectral imager and the broad‐band radiometer.
Operating in the UV range at 355 nm, ATLID provides atmospheric echoes with a vertical resolution up to 100 m from ground to an altitude of 40 km. Thanks to a high spectral resolution filtering, the lidar is able to separate the relative contribution of aerosol and molecular scattering, which gives access to aerosol optical depth. Co‐polarised and cross‐polarised components of the Mie scattering contribution are also separated and measured on dedicated channels. The combination of a powerful laser transmitter delivering short pulses at 51 Hz and low noise detection chains based on memory CCD provide capability to measure even faint backscatter from sub‐visible cirrus. Radiometric stability is ensured by a continuous active re‐alignment system maintaining the accurate co‐alignment of emission and reception paths, and by a highly stable injection of the single‐mode laser transmitter.
Atmospheric Lidar ATLID onboard EarthCARE Mission
Optical Payloads for Space Missions ; 583-599
2015-12-10
17 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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