An excimer laser-based lidar system for tropospheric ozone measurements

Summary form only given. Air pollution due to increased levels of tropospheric ozone (typically, 50 ppb in clean air, and /spl ges/100 ppb for urban air) can cause respiratory problems, damage lung tissue, and compromise the immune system response in humans and animals. Our research effort has focused on optimizing the Cassegrain telescope facility at the Howard University Atmospheric Observatory (HUAO) in Beltsville, Maryland (located at latitude 39/spl deg/ 04.01 N and longitude 76/spl deg/ 52.31 W) in an attempt to design and implement a lidar system for remote daytime concentration measurements of ozone in the lower troposphere (in the 1-2 km range). The system, is comprised of a laser transmitter a telescope receiver and suitable electronics (including photomultiplier tubes, pre-amp discriminators and multichannel counters) interfaced with a microcomputer for data acquisition. We have implemented the lidar design utilizing a KrF excimer laser (Questek Model 2240) at 248 nm (operating at an average power of about 15 W) as the excitation source.