Airborne lidar measurements of water vapor profiles in the hurricane environment

The Lidar Atmospheric Sensing Experiment (LASE) Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) system was used to remotely measure the distributions of water vapor, aerosols, and clouds throughout the troposphere during the recent NASA Convection and Moisture Experiments (CAMEX-3 and CAMEX-4). This lidar system was deployed on the NASA DC-8 aircraft and simultaneously measured high-resolution cross-sections of water vapor distributions above and below the aircraft to evaluate the impact of high spatial resolution water vapor distributions on forecasts of hurricane track and intensity. This paper describes the LASE system and presents measurements acquired during CAMEX-3 and CAMEX-4.