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Aerosol plays an important role in global climate and weather changes. Polarization lidar captures parallel and perpendicular signals from atmosphere to research aerosols. The lidar system we used has three emission wavelengths and could obtain the atmospheric aerosol extinction coefficient, backscattering coefficient and depolarization ratio. In this paper, the design of the lidar is described. The methods of data acquisition and inversion are given. Some recent results are presented.

A Three-Wavelength Polarization-Raman Lidar (TWPRL) system for aerosol and clouds was developed. This lidar system provides α at 532 and 355 nm, β at 355, 532 and 1064 nm, and σ at 532 nm as well as water vapor content using Raman lidar techniques. The temporal and vertical variation of aerosols and clouds could be determined. We conducted shipborne TWPRL measurements over Yellow Sea of China from August to September in 2014. The derived aerosol optical properties indicate that the developed lidar system worked very well. 24-hour continuous measurements with the shipborne TWPRL during the cruise are presented.

Vertical profiles of particulates were measured by a 355 nm Mie scattering lidar during a dust-storm event. A high energy pulse laser was employed as the light source to detect the extinction coefficient in the altitude up to 6 km in the day and 9 km at night. The extinction profiles showed layers of high aerosol concentrations in good agreement with ground-based pollution measurements, which indicated that such ultra-violet lidar is a very useful remote sensing instrument for monitoring extinction profiles during extreme high aerosol loading and low visibility atmospheric conditions when low energy lidar systems cannot obtain effective results.