The ESA-EVE Polarization Lidar for Assessing the Aeolus Aerosol Product Perfomance

• Main Authors: Paschou Peristera, Proestakis Emmanouil, Tsekeri Alexandra, Siomos Nikos, Gkikas Antonis, Gialitaki Anna, Marinou Eleni, Binietoglou Ioannis, Meleti Charikleia, Freudenthaler Volker, Georgoussis George, Doxastakis George, Louri-das Alexandros, Von Bismarck Jonas, Amiridis Vassilis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2020-01-01
• Series: EPJ Web of Conferences
• Online Access: https://www.epj-conferences.org/articles/epjconf/pdf/2020/13/epjconf_ilrc292020_07025.pdf

We present the EVE lidar concept, a combined linear/circular polarization system, tailored to evaluate the spaceborne ALADIN Doppler lidar system aerosol retrievals. EVE, currently under development, aims to provide the ESA-Aeolus mission with a flexible, mobile reference ground-based lidar system capable of providing well-characterized fiducial reference measurements of aerosol optical properties. Since ALADIN detects only the co-polar component of the backscattered circularly polarized radiation, a portion of the received radiation gets lost, leading to an un-derestimation of the backscatter coefficient and the circular depolarization ratio in strongly depolarizing scenes with non-spherical particles. The main focus of the new EVE lidar is to quantify these uncertainties and to evaluate aerosol backscatter/extinction retrievals for Aeolus, and later also for EarthCARE product validation, quality assessment and improvement.