LITE aerosol retrievals

The Lidar In-space Technology Experiment (LITE) shuttle mission demonstrated that spaceborne lidar offers an effective means for detecting the spatial features of significant regional aerosol concentrations resulting, for example, from Saharan dust, African and South American biomass burning and anthropogenic sources. To obtain quantitative estimates from the LITE data of radiatively important aerosol optical properties such as optical depths and extinction profiles requires supplemental information about the aerosols, supplied either by modeling or from auxiliary measurements. This paper outlines techniques for retrieving these aerosol optical parameters, and presents example retrievals obtained from the LITE observations.