HISTORY AND APPLICATIONS OF SPACE-BORNE LIDARS

HISTORY AND APPLICATIONS OF SPACE-BORNE LIDARS

Blog Article

LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a laser altimeter system that determines the distance by measuring pulse travel time.The data from the LIDAR systems provide unique information on the vertical structure of land covers.Compared to ground-based and airborne LIDARs providing a high-resolution digital surface Pouches model, space-borne LIDARs can provide important information about the vertical profile of the atmosphere in a global scale.The overall objective of these satellites is to study the elevation changes and the vertical distribution of clouds and aerosols.

In this paper an overview on the space-borne laser scanner satellites are accomplished and their applications are introduced.The first space-borne LIDAR is the ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) satellite carrying the GLAS instrument which was launched in January 2003.The CALIPSO (the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations, 2006), CATS-ISS (the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, 2015), ADM-Aeolus (Atmospheric Dynamics Mission, 2018), and ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, 2018) satellites were respectively lunched and began to receive information about the vertical structure of the atmosphere and land cover.In addition, two Downstems ACE (The Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystems, 2022) and EarthCARE (Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer, 2021) space-borne satellites were planned for future.

The data of the satellites are increasingly utilized to improve the numerical weather predictions (NWP) and climate modeling.