The Measurement of Tropospheric

EPJ Web of Conferences 119,27004 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/epjconf/201611927004 ILRC 27 THE MEASUREMENT OF TROPOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE PROFILES USING RAYLEIGH-BRILLOUIN SCATTERING: RESULTS FROM LABORATORY AND ATMOSPHERIC STUDIES Benjamin Witschas1*, Oliver Reitebuch1, Christian Lemmerz1, Pau Gomez Kableka1, Sergey Kondratyev2, Ziyu Gu3, Wim Ubachs3 1German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, 82234 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany 2Angstrom Ltd., 630090 Inzhenernaya16, Novosibirsk, Russia 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, LaserLaB, VU University, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands *Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT are only applicable to stratospheric or meso- In this letter, we suggest a new method for spheric measurements because they can only be measuring tropospheric temperature profiles using applied in air masses that do not contain aerosols, Rayleigh-Brillouin (RB) scattering. We report on or where appropriate fluorescing metal atoms laboratory RB scattering measurements in air, exist. In contrast, Raman lidars can be applied for demonstrating that temperature can be retrieved tropospheric measurements [2]. Nevertheless, it from RB spectra with an absolute accuracy of has to be mentioned that the Raman scattering better than 2 K. In addition, we show temperature cross section is quite low. Thus, powerful lasers, profiles from 2 km to 15.3 km derived from RB sophisticated background filters, or night-time spectra, measured with a high spectral resolution operation are required to obtain reliable results. In lidar during daytime. A comparison with particular, the rotational Raman differential radiosonde temperature measurements shows backscattering cross section (considering Stokes reasonable agreement. In cloud-free conditions, and anti-Stokes branches) is about a factor of 50 the temperature difference reaches up to 5 K smaller than the one of Rayleigh scattering [3]. within the boundary layer, and is smaller than Regarding this, it is a preferred method to retrieve 2.5 K above. The statistical error of the derived temperatures from Rayleigh–Brillouin (RB) temperatures is between 0.15 K and 1.5 K. scattered light, as it can be done by high spectral resolution lidars (HSRL). In particular, 1. INTRODUCTION atmospheric temperature can be derived by Temperature is a key parameter of the state of the resolving the RB spectrum with high spectral atmosphere and hence, temperature data play an resolution filters, such as atomic vapor cells [4] or important role in atmospheric dynamics, Fabry–Pérot interferometers [5], and relating the climatology, meteorology, and chemistry. For this measured spectrum to an appropriate line shape reason, observational data on atmospheric model. Thus, apart from the challenging optical temperature profiles are important inputs to setup, such an approach is depending on the models predicting the atmospheric state and to detailed knowledge of the RB scattering process retrieve details of other atmospheric properties, and on the accuracy of line shape models that such as wind, pressure, relative humidity, or other describe the spectral distribution of RB scattered trace gas concentrations. light. In 1974, Tenti et al. [6] developed a model - the so-called Tenti S6 model - for describing RB At present, lidar instruments enable the measure- spectra of light scattered in molecular gases of ment of temperature with high accuracy (≈1 K), single species, which is since then considered as high vertical resolution (≈100 m), and long range the best model available. Recently performed (from ground up to 105 km) [1]. In order to laboratory studies [7-8] showed that the Tenti S6 achieve this performance, it is common to use model describes the measured RB spectra in air integration technique lidar systems, fluorescence with deviations smaller than 2% if modifications lidars, or rotational Raman lidars. The former two on the model calculations are performed taking © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). EPJ Web of Conferences 119,27004 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/epjconf/201611927004 ILRC 27 into account the mixed nature of air as scattering demonstrates the possibility of retrieving absolute medium. In order to retrieve temperature from temperatures from RB profiles with high measured RB profiles, they have to be analyzed accuracy. with the Tenti S6 model in a certain optimization 0.35 procedure as for instance a least-squares fit with T = 279.6 K, p = 870 hPa T = 296.0 K, p = 1005 hPa 0.30 temperature as free fitting parameter. As for such T = 330.3 K, p = 1014 hPa method it is an important issue how the 2% model 0.25 deviation transfers into a temperature error. 0.20 0.15 So as to deal with this issue, RB scattering 0.10 intensity/(arb. units) measurements in air at a wavelength of 403 nm, at 0.05 a scattering angle of 91.7º, for temperatures from 0.00 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 257 K to 330 K and pressures from 871 hPa to frequency/(GHz) 1013 hPa were performed and used to verify a temperature retrieval algorithm. The results from 340 330 this study are discussed in section 2. In addition, 320 atmospheric daytime measurements of 310 tropospheric temperature profiles (2–15 km) using 300 RB scattering were performed demonstrating that /(K) 290 temperatures can be derived from RB profiles model 280 T with an accuracy better than 2 K (see section 3). 270 Based on the results from the laboratory and 260 250 atmospheric studies, a novel lidar temperature 250 260 270 280 290 300 310 320 330 340 receiver is suggested and is currently under TPt100/(K) development at the German Aerospace center DLR (see section 4). It is based on a Fizeau Figure 1: (top): RB spectra measured at 403 nm, a interferometer used to resolve the RB spectrum scattering angle of 91.7° and different temperatures without any scanning procedures. (colors). (bottom): Temperatures derived from measured spectra by using the Tenti S6 model (solid 2. LABORATORY MEASUREMENTS blue dots) and the corresponding linear fit (dashed blue line). The gray line represents the Tmodel = TPt100 line. In order to investigate the principal accuracy that can be reached by deriving temperature from RB spectra in air, highly accurate laboratory 3. ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENTS measurements were performed at the LaserLaB of VU University Amsterdam. Details about the In addition to the laboratory measurements, experimental setup and the applied retrieval atmospheric measurements have been performed. algorithm can be found in [9]. An example of The lidar used for this study was not originally measured RB profiles at different temperatures built for this purpose, but is actually a Doppler and pressures can be seen in Figure 1 (top). The wind lidar, used for validating the instrument of spectra illustrate the high signal-to-noise ratio on the ADM-Aeolus satellite mission initiated by the measured RB spectra obtained, as well as the ESA [10]. However, as it is shown in [11], the line shape broadening with increasing instrument is also suited for measuring temp- temperature. erature by means of RB scattering. In Figure 1 (bottom), the retrieved temperatures To record RB profiles, the frequency of the laser Tmodel are shown as a function of the reference is changed in defined steps Δf (e.g., Δf = 125 temperature TPt100. It is obvious that there is very MHz), over a range of 12 GHz (at 354.89 nm) and good accordance between retrieved- and reference a Fabry-Perot interferometer (Full Width Half temperature. In particular, the absolute difference Maximum (FWHM) ~ 1.7 GHz, Free Spectral is less than 2 K for all measurements. A linear Range (FSR) ~ 11 GHz) is used as frequency correlation (Figure 1, blue dashed lines) yields a discriminator. Considering 90 steps and duration slope of 1.01 ± 0.02, and thus clearly of 18 s per step, the sampling of the entire RB line 2 EPJ Web of Conferences 119,27004 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/epjconf/201611927004 ILRC 27 shape requires 28 min. It is worth mentioning that particle scattering was considered within the sampling the RB spectrum with only a few points temperature retrieval, uncertainties are caused by (≈15) would be enough to reach maximum temporal variations in the particle load during line accuracy for the temperature retrieval (according shape sampling. Simulations confirm that to simulations). However, as the measurement discrepancies of larger than 20 K can occur if the uncertainty is inversely proportional to the signal particle scattering is not constant within the level, reducing the sample number or rather sampling process. In addition, it has to be pointed measurement time increases the uncertainty of the out that the limited FPI resolution of 1.7 GHz is derived temperatures. Furthermore, it is beneficial not perfectly suited to resolving the influence of to have more samples to resolve the peak resulting particle scattering on the RB spectrum. from particle scattering in aerosol-rich regions. Thus, it is concluded that, although very An example of measured RB line shapes = (Δf promising for clear air conditions, the suggested 250 MHz) at different distances (6.4 km 12.7 km) – approach still suffers from the influence of is shown in Figure 2 (top). It is pointed out that particle scattering. the signal from bin 21 (10.2 km–11.5 km) shows a remarkable contribution from significantly narrower particle scattering on a cirrus cloud, which also has to be considered for temperature retrieval. A generic temperature profile retrieved from the measured RB spectra is shown in Figure 2 (bottom, left, red dots). For this measurement, the corresponding RB profile was sampled with 93 points separated by 125 MHz, leading to a frequency range of about 11.6 GHz and a 16 Radiosonde temperature measurement time of 28 min.

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