The Doppler wind, temperature, and aerosol RMR lidar system at Kühlungsborn, Germany - Part 1: Technical specifications and capabilities

Abstract

This paper describes the technical specifications of the extensions made to the middle-atmospheric lidar facility at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Kühlungsborn, Germany (54.12°gN, 11.77°gE). The upgrade complements the existing daylight-capable Rayleigh-Mie-Raman (RMR) temperature lidar with a nighttime-only RMR wind-temperature lidar. The new system comprises an independent lidar with laser, telescopes, and detectors, which is synchronized with and adapted to the (old) temperature lidar. As a result, with the combination of RMR lidars the atmosphere is probed with three (vertical and tilted) beams. This work intends to highlight the recent innovations in the construction of a Doppler-Rayleigh lidar system using the single-edge iodine-cell technique, which allows for the simultaneous measurement of wind, temperature, and aerosols. We will detail supporting subsystems that allow for a high degree of lidar automation and concisely provide key technical information about the system that will support readers in the development of additional RMR wind-temperature lidar systems. We show an example of time-resolved temperature and wind soundings reaching up to g1/4g90gkm. These data agree well with ECMWF-IFS profiles between 35 and g1/4g50gkm but show a much larger variability above. In the companion article, we will present the algorithm design and uncertainty budgets associated with the data processing chain.