Lidar development with applications to the stratosphere-troposphere exchange and tropical aerosol detection

Lidar remote sensing of the atmosphere is explored through the use and development of the Rayleigh and resonance lidar systems at the Arecibo Observatory (18.3{dollar}spcirc{dollar}N, 66.8{dollar}spcirc{dollar}W). Resonance lidar capabilities have been demonstrated at the Arecibo Observatory for both sodium and potassium. The initiation, development, and details of the lidar system, based on an alexandrite solid state ring laser, are discussed. We present initial resonance observations, as well as the exciting potential for dual- wavelength upper troposphere and lower stratosphere aerosol observations.; The Arecibo five year Rayleigh lidar data base and latitudinal snap shot from the Space Shuttle LITE experiment are used to study the temporal and spatial distributions of volcanic aerosols entrained in the stratosphere. The results support recent global models which suggest an extra tropical suction pump is responsible for mass being up drawn across the tropical tropopause, moved poleward, then pushed downward in the extratropics (Holton et al., 1995).; The aerosol scattering wavelength dependence is introduced through the Angstrom coefficient to estimate aerosol size distributions. The analysis is extended to upper tropospheric cirrus clouds. Initial observations of two types of cirrus are presented. We speculate that one type are the remnants of convective activity, while the second grow in the cold tropical tropopause. We present a single example of the wavelength dependence as an example of the utility of multi-wavelength lidar analysis.; Local stratospheric/tropospheric exchanges are investigated through a detailed discussion of lidar, radar, and balloon observations of temperatures and wind field fluctuations. On a single remarkable night, September 14-15, 1994, we captured two unique examples of convective activity at the tropopause and in the lower stratosphere. The first is a large scale molecular density depletion (temperature enhancement) just below the tropopause, which we believe is the result of strong convective parcels which are trapped at the tropopause inversion. The second example are temperature steps in the lower stratosphere that are hypothesized to have been caused by overshooting convective parcels from a frontal line some 200 km upwind of our location.