Rotational Raman Temperature Lidar: New Experimental Results and Performance Expected for Future Ground-based and Airborne Systems

We present temperature measurements made with the RASC Raman lidar. This instrument, which was optimized for tropospheric and stratospheric temperature profiling, allows to the authors' best knowledge temperature measurements by lidar with at date highest accuracy and resolution in this altitude region. The data were measured with the rotational Raman technique with a laser wavelength of 532 nm. Based on these experimental results, we discuss the performance if instead of 532 nm a laser wavelength of 355 nm is employed. We show that measurements with very high resolution are possible with such a system in the lower troposphere. At University of Hohenheim, Germany, a scanning ground-based system is currently under development which will combine water vapour differential absorption lidar (DIAL) and such a 355-nm rotational Raman temperature lidar. The synergetic effects of this combination are discussed. Furthermore, we present the results of model calculations which demonstrate that airborne operation of rotational Raman lidar would yield accurate data for many interesting applications.