Inversion algorithms for space lidar observation of clouds and aerosols

The Mission Demonstration Satellite lidar (MDS) is being developed by the National Space Development Agency of Japan for launch in early 2000's. The MDS-lidar will provide a dataset of global distribution of aerosols and clouds. The data will be useful for studies of radiation effects of clouds and aerosols, and validation and assimilation of climate models. This paper discusses the lidar signal inversion algorithms, for the MDS-lidar to quantitatively retrieve the optical properties of aerosols and clouds. Since the effects of multiple scattering and cloud spatial inhomogeneity are significant in the space-lidar measurements, these effects are considered in this paper. Also, an iterative algorithm which is based on the backward inversion algorithm and uses available near-end boundary condition is presented and applied to the inversion of dense cloud signals for the MDS-lidar. A high-spectral-resolution- lidar has been used as a ground-based test tool for the algorithm study.