Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging)

Introduction

If you’ve ever been on UBC campus at night, you may have noticed a green glow emanating from Totem Field towards the south. Contrary to popular belief, the green glow is not an alien, nor is it Armageddon – it’s the UBC lidar at work!

The state-of-the-art mobile lidar was the first station established as part of CORALNet (Canadian Operational Research Aerosol lidar Network). It has been operational since April 2008, and provides a detailed look at the aerosol (suspended particle) layers through the depth of the atmosphere – from near ground level to 15 km.

Why lidars?

Lidars are important in that they provide high temporal and spatial resolution of rapidly evolving atmospheric structures, and reveal important information about aerosol properties and dispersion. They are also a great complimentary tool to use as verification of your own field data!

A note for students

You may encounter lidar output in many of your courses in climatology (e.g. GEOB 300, 304, 401, 402). Here, we provide some basic information that may help you understand specific course content, or your own research projects. This will be particularly useful to students taking GEOB 402/Air Pollution Meteorology.

To fully appreciate and synthesize your knowledge, you are encouraged to take the self-quiz at the end of this module, and access the CORALNet website to look at the real-time output online.

Tip: You can click on any image in the module to open and expand it in a new window!

The CORALNet-UBC lidar station on Totem Field (left), and an example of daily first-look output at 1064 nm for July 20^th, 2010, available on the CORALNet website (right).

Continue to Lidar Basics >>