Research at MISU

Lidar Studies at Esrange

Responsible: Jonas Hedin, Stefan Lossow, Bodil Karlsson, Linda Megner, Misha Khaplanov, Jörg Gumbel, in collaboration with K. H. Fricke (Bonn University, Germany)

Since 2004, our middle atmosphere research group is involved in lidar measurements carried out with the lidar of the Bonn University at Esrange. This activity is at the moment a complement to rocket campaigns conducted at Esrange, such as the MAGIC campaign in January 2005. The Bonn lidar is a Rayleigh/Mie/Raman (RMR) lidar transmitting light of wavelenghts 532 and 1064 nm into the atmosphere, where it is scattered by atoms, molecules and aerosols. The light which is backscattered at 180^o is collected by three bore sighted Newtonian telescopes, each with a diameter of 50.8 cm, and then detected by several different channels. From the backscattered signal it is possible to derive temperature and density profiles, to detect clouds and aerosol layers and to estimate some properties of the aerosol particles. This information can be obtained between 5 and 100 km, depending on the geophysical conditions.

An important objective of the Esrange lidar are studies in the vicinity of the Scandinavian mountain range. Simultaneous measurements are possible with the stratospheric lidar located at IRF and the ALOMAR RMR lidar located on Andøya, Norway, west of the mountains. As the Scandinavian mountain ridge provides a major source of orographically induced waves, this offers unique possibilities to study the effects of gravity waves in the middle atmosphere.

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Last updated: January 11, 2006
Jörg Gumbel (gumbel@misu.su.se)