TOLNet ozone lidar intercomparison during the discover-aq and frappé campaigns

¹ University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA,
² NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, USA
³ NASA Langley Research Center, USA
⁴ Coherent Applications Inc., USA
⁵ Science Systems and Applications, Inc, USA
⁶ University of Colorado, USA
⁷ California Institute of Technology, USA
⁸ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA

^* mike@nsstc.uah.edu

Published online: 13 April 2018

Abstract

The Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet) is a unique network of lidar systems that measure atmospheric profiles of ozone and aerosols, to contribute to air-quality studies, atmospheric modeling, and satellite validation efforts. The accurate characterization of these lidars is of critical interest, and is necessary to determine cross-instrument calibration uniformity. From July to August 2014, three lidars, the TROPospheric OZone (TROPOZ) lidar, the Tunable Optical Profiler for Aerosol and oZone (TOPAZ) lidar, and the Langley Mobile Ozone Lidar (LMOL), of TOLNet participated in the “Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality” (DISCOVER-AQ) mission and the “Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Éxperiment” (FRAPPÉ) to measure sub-hourly ozone variations from near the surface to the top of the troposphere. Although large differences occur at few individual altitudes in the near field and far field range, the TOLNet lidars agree with each other within ±4%. These results indicate excellent measurement accuracy for the TOLNet lidars that is suitable for use in air-quality and ozone modeling efforts.