LITES: Rotational Raman Spectra of Air Molecules Measured by High-Resolution-Spectroscopy Lidar

Abstract

We present first measurement from a new lidar facility that has been designed and built at the University of Hertforshire since 2012. LITES (Lidar Innovations for Technologies and Environmental Sciences) allows for testing, developping and measuring a multitude of, e.g. climate-change relevant parameters of atmospheric particulate pollution and photo-chemically reactive trace gases. The core of LITES consists of a lidar spectroscopy instrument. In this first contribution we present the design and specifications of this instrument, its performance and potential applications. We show first examples of measurements of range-resolved pure rotational Raman spectra and rotational-vibrational Raman spectra of air molecules with a spectral resolution better than 5 cm-1. We also present day-time temperature profiles obtained from pure rotational spectroscopic lidar signals. In future work we want to explore the potential to what extent measurements of range-resolved Raman spectrums with our multi-channel high-resolution spectrometric lidar can lead to a vertically resolved chemical characterization of aerosols and trace gases.