A 7-Year Lidar Temperature Climatology of the Mid-Latitude Upper Troposphere and Stratosphere

AbstractThe Purple Crow Lidar (PCL) is a large power-aperture product monostatic laser radar which until 2010 was located at the Delaware Observatory (42°52′N, 81°23′W, 225 m elevation above sea level) near the campus of the University of Western Ontario. It is capable of measuring temperature from 10 to 110 km altitude, as well as water vapour in the troposphere and stratosphere. We use upper tropospheric and stratospheric vibrational Raman N2 backscatter-derived temperatures to form a climatology for the years 1999 to 2007 from 10 to 40 km attitude. The lidar temperatures are validated using nearby radiosonde measurements from Detroit and Buffalo. The measured temperatures show good agreement with the radiosonde soundings. An agreement of ±1 K is found during the summer months and ±2.5 K during the winter months, validating the calibration of the lidar to within the geophysical variability of the measurements. Comparison between the PCL measurements and the Committee on Space Research International Refe...