Contribution to the CIRA Model from Ground-based Lidar

Abstract

A new technique, the Rayleigh-Lidar Sounding, has been developed recently to probe the Middle Atmosphere and has demonstrated its ability to provide density and temperature profiles in the height range 30 to 90 km. It has been limited until now to ground-based observations. The set of data, as it exists to-day, has been obtained from a unique midlatitude site. Even with this limiting factor, it is thought to be a useful complement to a global model, mainly because of its spatial and temporal resolutions, usually not available from global data. Such resolutions give an insight into the atmospheric variability as a function of height and time, for time-scale ranging from minutes to years. The process is briefly described. A description of the analysis and its results is given.