Direct Estimation of Fine and Coarse Mode Particle Parameters from Multiwavelength Lidar Measurements

An approach for the direct estimation (DE) of particle parameters in the fine and coarse mode from multiwavelength lidar measurements is presented. Particle size distributions in both modes are approximated by rectangular functions, so the particle density is estimated directly without solving the inverse problem. The numerical simulation demonstrates that the particle volume in both modes can be estimated from 3β+2α lidar measurements with uncertainty of ~25% for a wide range of size distributions. The technique developed was applied to the observations of NASA GSFC Raman lidar. Comparison of the results obtained with DE and regularization approach applied to the same set of data demonstrates agreement between these two techniques.