This award is for development of a Multi-function Airborne Raman Lidar (MARL). The project will extend mature ground-based Raman lidar technology to airborne weather research applications. The major intellectual challenge is to design the system so as to provide high quality measurements in the technically challenging airborne environment, which will require reducing system power, size and weight and increasing tolerance to vibration. The state-of-the-art mechanical/optical design and analysis, which has previously been tested for both NSF-sponsored Univ. of Wyoming King Air (UWKA) and NASA-sponsored airborne systems, will be used to integrate laser, electro-optical, and other sensors to produce a reliable airborne system. One important design feature is planned capability for dual-wavelength water vapor Raman measurements over a large range of solar atmospheric conditions. MARL will provide simultaneous measurements of temperature, water vapor mixing ratio, aerosol and/or cloud extinction coefficient and depolarization ratio, and cloud water content profiles with high horizontal and vertical resolutions when operated aboard either the UWKA or NSF/NCAR C-130 research aircraft platforms. MARL will fill several instrumentation gaps identified by previous NSF-sponsored Lower Atmospheric Observing Facilities (LAOF) workshops and will transform our capability to observe the atmosphere at horizontal resolutions ranging from ~100m to ~1 km. The intellectual merit also rests in scientific contributions from planned deployments of this instrument, including improved understanding of small-scale interactions between clouds and their environments, air-sea and land-atmosphere interactions, boundary layer structure and processes under cloudy conditions or over heterogeneous surfaces, mesoscale atmospheric environments and dynamics (especially those related to convective initiation), and both transport and dispersion of aerosols and/or pollutants in the near-surface boundary layer. Several field projects are planned to use MARL to address important atmospheric processes, all with the goal to improve our ability to improve weather, climate and air quality forecasts.
There are broader impacts from enhancing community measurement infrastructure. Once MARL has been completed and successfully demonstrated, it will be available to external users on the UWKA and NSF/NCAR C-130. The synergy of MARL with other LAOF instruments will allow NSF-supported researchers to address science questions that are limited by current observational capabilities, thereby opening numerous opportunities for new discoveries in atmospheric science. There are important societal broader impacts from the scientific measurements possible with MARL. Fine scale measurements of water vapor and temperature by MARL will significantly advance our understanding of processes controlling mesoscale dynamics and associated cloud and precipitation development toward better prediction of high impact weather events. Other process studies will improve cloud and ABL parameterizations for better climate and air quality prediction. Furthermore, exceptional opportunities for graduate and undergraduate education and training will arise from this project. While one graduate student is included specifically, all graduate students in the research group will participate to some extent in instrument development and testing. The lidar system will be incorporated into the Atmospheric Instrumentation course offered at the University of Wyoming to provide students with hands-on experience using state-of-the-art atmospheric remote sensing capabilities. The availability of the instrumentation to the wider atmospheric science community will greatly increase the number and diversity of students utilizing this equipment.
