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Dr. Demetrius Venable
Department of Physics & Astronomy
Howard University
Wednesday February 6, 4 pm
Thirkield Hall (Physics), room 103
The Beltsville Lidar Laboratory
In this presentation, we discuss Lidar measurements at the Howard University Beltsville Laboratory. The talk will focus on a review of the development of the Howard University Raman Lidar (HURL). HURL was specifically designed to make both daytime and nighttime measurements of atmospheric water vapor. HURL uses narrow bandpass filters and a narrow field-of-view telescope to measure: (1) the Rayleigh/Mie and pure rotational Raman signals at 354.7±0.13 nm, (2) the Raman scattered photons from nitrogen molecules at 386.7±0.13 nm, and (3) the Raman scattered photons from water vapor molecules at 407.5±0.13 nm. The primary rational for the development of HURL is to generate high quality data sets that characterize temporal and vertical distributions of water vapor and dynamics processes in the lower troposphere – with 7.5 m spatial resolution and one-minute temporal resolution. The principal customer for these data sets is the mesoscale modeling group (Joseph, et al). HURL is also used to measure cirrus cloud optical depths and aerosols. In addition, we briefly review our SOLEX system (the original Lidar at the site) and briefly discuss some visiting Lidar systems that have been housed at the laboratory. Finally, we highlight some of the collaborators who support the Lidar activities: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Weather Service, Maryland Department of the Environment, and others.
Contributors: Adam, Connell, Farrah, Moore, Mensah, Walford, Torres, Thorpe, Joseph, Demoz, Whiteman, et al.
Refreshments will be served at 3:40pm