Nobuo Sugimoto, Atsushi Shimizu, Tomoaki Nishizawa, Ichiro Matsui, Boyan Tatarov, Osamu Uchino, and Hideaki Nakane

National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES),  16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506 Japan, Telephone: +81-298-50-2459

 

Network observations of tropospheric aerosols using two-wavelength (532 nm, 1064 nm) polarization (532 nm) lidars are conducted currently at 22 locations in Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, and Thailand. The network named NIES Lidar Network is a part of Asian Lidar Network (ADNet) and participates in the GAW Aerosol Lidar Observation Network (GALION) as an East Asian component. The data from the network lidars are transferred to NIES in realtime and processed automatically to drive the attenuated backscatter coefficients, the total depolarization ratio and the extinction coefficients of non-spherical and spherical aerosols. The network data are used in various studies on Asian dust and regional air pollution. Recently, receivers for nitrogen Raman scattering (607 nm) were added to the network lidars at several locations for better characterizing aerosols. Observations with a high-spectral-resolution lidar at 532nm have been also performed at NIES in Tsukuba since 2003. Recently, a range-resolved spectrometer using a 32-channel multi-anode photomultiplier was introduced to study Raman scattering from particles and molecules. Also, a new multi-wavelength high-spectral-resolution lidar and a tropospheric ozone lidar are being developed for the next generation lidar network. Observations of stratospheric ozone and temperature have been conducted in Tsukuba since 1988. Variations of ozone with the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and the 11-year solar cycle and the trends were analyzed.