WALES: water vapour lidar experiment in space

Abstract

cover the variation of water vapour concentration. For WALES, three  ONs and one  OFF are a The WAter vapour Lidar Experiment in Space good compromise. (WALES) mission aims at providing water vapour This difference in absorption at the two transmitted profiles with high accuracy and vertical resolution wavelengths leads to the determination of the through the troposphere and the lower stratosphere on a concentration of the species of interest. The DIAL global scale using an instrument based on Differential is therefore a dual-wavelength lidar in which the Absorption Lidar (DIAL) observation technique, and signals detected at the two wavelengths are mounted on an Earth orbiting satellite. processed to extract the absolute density number of This active DIAL technique will also provide data on water vapour. the cloud coverage by means of the signal reflection on Lidar detection by optical means is performed by a the cloud layers.