Advanced Environmental Applications Group in cooperation with Photonics Technology Department is conducting routine Lidar measurements of atmospheric aerosols at our Aerospace Corporation location in El Segundo, California. Atmospheric aerosols are small particulates (dust, smoke, water droplets, etc.) suspended in the lower atmosphere. Aerosols play an important role for solar energy balance, visibility and many more aspects of climatology and weather.

We operate a Lidar system for monitoring atmospheric aerosols / particulates. The system has a 355 nm laser transmitter and receiving channels to detect elastic backscattering from the atmosphere (Rayleigh plus particles) and inelastic scattering (rotational Raman scattering from N₂ and O₂). A few recent examples of our Lidar data is shown on the left. A logarithm of elastic to inelastic scattering is plotted with lighter areas indicating higher particulate scattering.

Our system is temporarily down due to laser problems. We are expecting our lidar to be back online in early December. Please check back for updates.

We are planning to expand this page in the near future to make more of our Lidar data available to the atmospheric research community. All particle profiles that are currently available online can be found here. We are also operating a CIMEL Electronique 318A spectral radiometer (sun photometer) at this location. The sun photometer data is available on the AERONET website.