Meteorological Visibility Measurements by a Micro Pulsed Lidar during the 2006 Qingdao International Sailing Regatta

Meteorological visibility is a basic parameter for aeronautical, seafaring, expressway and military operations. In most domestic and overseas meteorological departments, the method to measure visibility is by eyeballing, which lacks criteria and objectivity. Among the instruments for visibility measurement, lidar is a powerful tool by directly collecting the backscattering laser light from the atmosphere. During the 2006 Qingdao International Sailing Regatta, atmospheric horizontal visibility was measured by an eye-safe Micro-pulsed lidar (MPL) which was developed by the Ocean Remote Sensing Laboratory (ORSL) of the Ocean University of China (OUC) in Xiaomai island (36deg3\´9.91"N, 120deg25\´37.10"E) from August 18 to 29, 2006. Klett method was used for processing the data measured from MPL. In this 12 days period, the visibility ranges from 1km to 30 km, covering many different weather conditions. The MPL operated stably at all times including the continual measurement from August 21 to 23, 2006 for both days and nights. Simultaneous eye observation data from Qingdao Meteorological Bureau were obtained for comparison. Visibility results of MPL system show good agreement with the eye observations data, with a correlation coefficient of 0.88. Experiments and comparisons successfully prove the capability and feasibility of the MPL system for atmospheric visibility.