Lidar for Ocean Applications: Review of International Efforts

^(a) Univ. Littoral Côte d'Opale, LOG UMR 8187, CNRS, IRD, Univ. Lille, 32 avenue Foch, 62930 Wimereux, France
^(b) Ocean Biology & Biogeochemistry Program, Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA
^(c) State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, 36 Baochubeilu, Hangzhou 310012, China
^(d) Lidar Science Branch, Science Directorate, NASA Langley Research Center, 1 NASA Drive, Hampton, VA, 23666, USA
^(e) School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy
^(f) Ningbo Innovation Center, State Key Laboratory of Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
^(g) University of Warsaw, Faculty of Physics, L.Pasteura 5, Warsaw 02-093, Poland
^(h) Institute of Marine Sciences, National Research Council (ISMAR-CNR), 00133 Rome, Italy Lead Author e-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 9 April 2026

Abstract

Passive remote sensing of the ocean color has changed our vision of the distribution of the phytoplankton and other optically-active constituents in the ocean. However, these observations have limitations as they cannot be obtained under clouds, under absorbing aerosols, at high latitudes, during the night, or over the vertical in the ocean. To overcome those limitations, lidars have been used, and led to many ocean discoveries despite not having an ocean optimized lidar satellite mission. To increase lidar literacy for the ocean community, it is necessary to provide comprehensive background and training on the technique but also on the ways to process the lidar signal. International efforts have developed lately in the form of an International Team at the International Space Sciences Institute. In this frame, a review of lidar algorithms provides a state-of-art description of the algorithms used to estimate the back-scattering and diffuse attenuation coefficients for elastic backscattering and high-spectral-resolution lidars.