The Analysis of Horizontal Lidar Data by the Method of Mean Ordinates

The algorithm of the method of mean ordinates involves the following steps: • It is assumed that atmospheric aerosol consists of three components, each described by a lognormal distribution; • The ranges of size distribution parameter intervals are specified so as to accommodate all conceivable types of aerosol. The distribution parameters are quantized within their intervals; • All possible combinations of the quantized size distribution parameters are set up, and aerosol particle size distributions are constructed for each combination; • Optical characteristics of each constructed model are calculated and compared with those to be inverted (initial characteristics); • The models whose optical characteristics fall within preset error limits are taken as acceptable solutions; • The mean ordinates over the ensemble of all acceptable solutions are calculated; • The model closest to the mean ordinates is taken as the most probable solution.