Lidar observation of ozone over Tsukuba (36 deg N, 140 deg E)

An ozone lidar system was installed at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) in Tsukuba, Japan in March 1988 and has been measuring vertical profiles of ozone (15 - 45 km) since September 1988. The lidar system consists of a XeCl (308 nm) excimer laser, its deuterium Raman shifter (339 nm), a XeF excimer laser (351 nm), a 2 m telescope, a receiving system and a data processing system. The precision of the derived ozone concentration is about 10 percent of an altitude of 40 km for a 4 hr observation. Temperature profiles (30 - 80 km) are also obtained from the Rayleigh scattering signals at 351 nm. Approximate 50 ozone measurements are carried out in a year and variations of vertical profiles of ozone such as seasonal variations and shorter-term variations are observed. Systematic errors due to aerosols had been negligible until the arrival of the stratospheric aerosols injected by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. Effects of the volcanic aerosols on ozone measurements depend on the differences between wavelengths used as the on- and off-resonance