| The Lidar In-space Technology Experiment (LITE) was a three-wavelength lidar that flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery during its 10-day mission in September 1994. LITE was the first demonstration of a lidar instrument in operation from space. This instrument was capable of detecting clouds, tropospheric and stratospheric aerosols, the return signal from the Earth's surface and the height of the planetary boundary layer (PBL). In this thesis, an analysis of the aerosol optical properties from the LITE measurements was performed to demonstrate the utility of space lidar data for studying tropospheric aerosols.;Methods were developed to derive aerosol backscattering coefficients and scattering ratios from the LITE level 1 data. Qualitative information on the aerosol size distribution was derived from a comparison of the 355 nm and 532 nm scattering ratios for a segment of orbit 117.;The 532 nm aerosol backscattering coefficients for LITE orbits 84, 85, 116, 117, 148 and 149 were compared to the output from the Northern Aerosol Regional Climate Model (NARCM). (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
