Kevin Strawbridge on Laser-measured air quality, KCIC Auditorium
| January 19, 2009 | ||
| 4:30 pm |
Environment Canada partners with Acadia University as a new lidar network rolls out across the country. Acadia University will provide a critical link in the chain of lidars across Canada. The remote sensing technique of lidar, similar to radar, except one uses light waves instead of radio waves and is therefore sensitive to the small particles that are present in the atmosphere. Lidar provides vertically-profiled information with high temporal resolution making it well-suited for understanding the optical and transport characteristics of aerosol layers aloft. Lidar has the ability to detect the complex vertical structure of the atmosphere and can therefore identify the existence and extent of aerosols that have undergone long-range transport with the aid of “back-trajectory” information. Environment Canada along with other university, federal and provincial partners is beginning a new initiative to locate a network of lidars, dubbed CORALNet (Canadian Operational Research Aerosol Lidar Network - www.coralnet.ca ), at strategic places across Canada to study and monitor the impact of aerosols on air quality on local, regional and national scales. The major advantage of a network of lidars is that routine measurements quite often capture “events” that are very often interesting for which one would have never had the foresight or insight to turn the lidar ON! Some initial results from recently deployed CORALNet sites will be presented along with discussions of Acadia’s important role within the CORALNet framework.
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