Influence of the air-water interface on hydrosol lidar operation.

The results of seawater sensing by use of an airborne lidar with a changeable field of view (FOV) are presented, together with the results of numerical simulation of lidar operation by the Monte Carlo method. It is demonstrated that multiple scattering and wind-driven sea waves have opposite effects on the measured attenuation coefficient. At small FOVs the wind-driven sea waves cause the lidar signal decay rate to increase compared with the size of the plane surface and hence result in an overestimation of the retrieved attenuation coefficient.

Method for reconstructing atmospheric optical parameters from the data of polarization lidar sensing.

Inversion of polarization lidar sensing data based on the form of the lidar sensing equation with allowance for contributions from multiple-scattering calls for a priori information on the scattering phase matrix. In the present study the parameters of the Stokes vectors for various propagation media, including those with the scattering phase matrices that vary along the measuring range, are investigated. It is demonstrated that, in spaceborne lidar sensing, a simple parameterization of the multiple-scattering contribution is applicable and the polarization signal's characteristics depend mainly on the lidar and depolarization ratios, whereas differences in the angular dependences of the matrix components are no longer determining factors.

Polarization structure of lidar signals reflected from ice crystal clouds.

Polarization characteristics of signals of a monostatic lidar intended for sensing of homogeneous ice crystal clouds are calculated by the Monte Carlo method. Clouds are modeled as monodisperse ensembles of randomly oriented hexagonal ice crystals. The polarization state of multiply scattered lidar signal components is analyzed for different scattering orders depending on the crystal shapes and sizes as well as on the optical and geometrical conditions of observation.