New Raman Lidar En Route to Australia

Published: 6 October 2010

Since 1996, the ARM Southern Great Plains site has maintained one of the few operational Raman lidars in the world. Now, thanks to funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the ARM Tropical Western Pacific site is about to join that exclusive group. A new Raman lidar, built by Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, is on its way to Darwin, Australia.

raman lidar2 — Optics contained inside the Raman lidar shelter guide backscattered laser radiation in order to measure signals collected by the telescope.

The Raman lidar (light detection and ranging) uses pulses of laser radiation to probe the atmosphere. A telescope collects the backscattered radiation that returns, and the optics inside the laboratory shelter use that radiation to derive time- and altitude-resolved profiles of atmospheric water vapor, aerosols, clouds, and temperature.

The system is housed in two standalone shelters; one serves as a laboratory enclosure, and the other contains support systems such as HVAC services and power conditioning. In September, it completed successful testing at Sandia and began its journey to Darwin, where a freshly poured concrete pad stands ready to receive it.

The new lidar is nearly identical to the Raman lidar at the SGP site, which was also developed by Sandia. As part of Recovery Act activities, Sandia is taking advantage of updated technology developed for the new lidar to upgrade the SGP lidar as well.

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The ARM Climate Research Facility is a DOE Office of Science user facility. The ARM Facility is operated by nine DOE national laboratories, including .