DIAL Measurements of Free-Tropospheric Ozone Profiles in Huntsville, AL

A tropospheric ozone Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) system, developed jointly by NASA and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), measures free-tropospheric ozone profiles between 4-10 km. Located at 192 meters altitude in the Regional Atmospheric Profiling Laboratory for Discovery (RAPCD) on the UAH campus in Huntsville, AL, USA, this tropospheric ozone lidar operates under both daytime and nighttime conditions. Frequent coincident ozonesonde flights and theoretical calculations provide evidence to indicate the retrieval accuracy ranges from better than 8% at 4km to 40%-60% at 10 kin with 750-m vertical resolution and 30-minute integration. With anticipated improvements to allow retrievals at both higher and lower altitudes, this ozone lidar, along with co-located aerosol and Doppler Wind Lidars, will provide a unique 18 dataset for investigations of PBL and free-tropospheric chemical and dynamic processes