Impact of broadened laser line-shape on retrievals of atmospheric species from lidar sounding absorption spectra.

We examine the impact of broadened laser line-shape on retrievals of atmospheric species from lidar-sounding absorption spectra. The laser is assumed to be deterministically modulated into a stable, nearly top-hat frequency comb to suppress the stimulated Brillouin scattering, allowing over 10-fold pulse energy increase without adding measurement noise. Our model remains accurate by incorporating the laser line-shape factor into the effective optical depth. Retrieval errors arising from measurement noise and model bias are analyzed parametrically and numerically to provide deeper insight. The stable laser line-shape broadening minimally degrades the column-averaged retrieval, but can significantly degrade the multiple-layer retrievals.