Lidar Sounding of Atmospheric Temperature and Density Variability with a 2.5 Meter Telescope

In May 1989 the Geophysics Laboratory (GL) mobile lidar facility was moved to Wright Patterson AFB and combined with the WRDC 2.5 meter telescope. The objective was to merge Air Force resources in a campaign to obtain atmospheric density data in the altitude range from 20 to 100 km. GL has been performing high altitude density measurements since 1984. For density measurements, the lidar system typically consists of a pulsed laser and a medium quality optical telescope to collect backscattered radiation. For UV and visible lasers, the optical signal is detected with photomultiplier tubes and the electrical signal is recorded either with a transient recorder or a multichannel scaler. The latter is used with photon counting and considerably increases the detection sensitivity.