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Abstract. There are only four lidar stations in the world which have almost continuously performed observations of the stratospheric aerosol layer (SAL) state over the last 30 years. The longest time series of the SAL lidar measurements have been accumulated at the Mauna Loa Observatory (Hawaii) since 1973, the NASA Langley Research Center (Hampton, Virginia) since 1974, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany) since 1976. The fourth lidar station we present started to perform routine observations of the SAL parameters in Tomsk (56.48° N, 85.05° E, Western Siberia, Russia) in 1986. In this paper, we mainly focus on and discuss the stratospheric background period from 2000 to 2005 and the causes of the SAL perturbations over Tomsk in the 2006–2015 period. During the last decade, volcanic aerosol plumes from tropical Mt. Manam, Soufrière Hills, Rabaul, Merapi, Nabro, and Kelut and extratropical (northern) Mt. Okmok, Kasatochi, Redoubt, Sarychev Peak, Eyjafjallajökull, and Grímsvötn were detected in the stratosphere over Tomsk. When it was possible, we used the NOAA HYSPLIT trajectory model to assign aerosol layers observed over Tomsk to the corresponding volcanic eruptions. The trajectory analysis highlighted some surprising results. For example, in the cases of the Okmok, Kasatochi, and Eyjafjallajökull eruptions, the HYSPLIT air mass backward trajectories, started from altitudes of aerosol layers detected over Tomsk with a lidar, passed over these volcanoes on their eruption days at altitudes higher than the maximum plume altitudes given by the Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program. An explanation of these facts is suggested. The role of both tropical and northern volcanic eruptions in volcanogenic aerosol loading of the midlatitude stratosphere is also discussed. In addition to volcanoes, we considered other possible causes of the SAL perturbations over Tomsk, i.e., the polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) events and smoke plumes from strong forest fires. At least two PSC events were detected in 1995 and 2007. We also make an assumption that the Kelut volcanic eruption (Indonesia, February 2014) could be the cause of the SAL perturbations over Tomsk during the first quarter of 2015.

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The paper describes an experiment aimed at studying muon capture by 3

A method for determining the dielectric permittivity of metal surfaces at terahertz (THz) frequencies has been suggested and tested. The method implies excitation of surface plasmons (SPs) on the sample surface and measurements of the SPs propagation length and field penetration depth in air. The technique was tested on evaporated gold with Novosibirsk free-electron laser at the wavelength of 130 μm. The method suggested paves the way for refractometry of metallized surfaces at THz frequencies.

Abstract. Among lidar techniques, the pure rotational Raman (PRR) technique is the best suited for tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature measurements. Calibration functions are required for the PRR technique to retrieve temperature profiles from lidar remote sensing data. Both temperature retrieval accuracy and number of calibration coefficients depend on the selected function. The commonly used calibration function (linear in reciprocal temperature 1∕T with two calibration coefficients) ignores all types of broadening of individual PRR lines of atmospheric N2 and O2 molecules. However, the collisional (pressure) broadening dominates over other types of broadening of PRR lines in the troposphere and can differently affect the accuracy of tropospheric temperature measurements depending on the PRR lidar system. We recently derived the calibration function in the general analytical form that takes into account the collisional broadening of all N2 and O2 PRR lines (Gerasimov and Zuev, 2016). This general calibration function represents an infinite series and, therefore, cannot be directly used in the temperature retrieval algorithm. For this reason, its four simplest special cases (calibration functions nonlinear in 1∕T with three calibration coefficients), two of which have not been suggested before, were considered and analyzed. All the special cases take the collisional PRR lines broadening into account in varying degrees and the best function among them was determined via simulation. In this paper, we use the special cases to retrieve tropospheric temperature from real PRR lidar data. The calibration function best suited for tropospheric temperature retrievals is determined from the comparative analysis of temperature uncertainties yielded by using these functions. The absolute and relative statistical uncertainties of temperature retrieval are given in an analytical form assuming Poisson statistics of photon counting. The vertical tropospheric temperature profiles, retrieved from nighttime lidar measurements in Tomsk (56.48° N, 85.05° E; Western Siberia, Russia) on 2 October 2014 and 1 April 2015, are presented as an example of the calibration functions application. The measurements were performed using a PRR lidar designed in the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for tropospheric temperature measurements.

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