Raman Lidar observations of height profiles of upper troposphere and lower stratosphere temperature over a tropical site Gadanki

We derived the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere temperatures with the Indo-Japanese Lidar system incorporating Raman capability in addition to existing elastic mode of observation on experimental basis for five months during Jan - May 2003. The derived temperatures are corrected for aerosol transmission, which is calculated from the Nitrogen Raman shifted signals. With a model reference temperature at 35 kin, the atmospheric temperature profiles were obtained over an altitude range of 8-28 km. A good comparison between the lidar and radiosonde temperatures were obtained over an altitude range of 8-16 km for a 2-hour integrated measurement with 300-m resolution. However, this technique fails in the strong aerosol regions such as the presence of optically thick cirrus layers in the upper troposphere.