East Asia and Western Pacific METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATE

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Atmospheric optical remote sensing includes passive remote
sensing by means of photometers and active remote sensing with the
lidar system. The laser atmospheric remote sensing has a history of
less than thirty years. It began in 1963, the fourth year after the
first laser came into being. The development of laser atmospheric
sensing, to a great degree, depends on the development of laser
technology. Before the mid 1970 f s, the laser radar was mainly based
on the principles of elastic scatteringCmolecular and aerosol), which
realized quantitative or semi-quantitative measurements of atmospheric
boundary aerosols, visibilities, stratospheric aerosols and clouds
etc.. Since then, thanks to the emergance of various tunable lasers
one after another, research on laser remote sensing of trace gases has
made great progress. Remote sensing of atmospheric water vapour
distribution, ozone and other trace gases has also obtained some
achievements. During this period, the differential absorption
lidar(DIAL) was mainly used. Looking forward to the 10-20 years from
now, along with the development of laser and photoelectron technology,
laser remote sensing from satellites and ground-based optical remote
sensing of local environmental compositions will gradually occupy an
important and special position.
Research on laser atmospheric remote sensing in China began
relatively early. In 1966,the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and
the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechinery, Chinese Academy
of Science developed cooperatively the first 100-MW ruby laser
radar'- 1 -' in China. It was only four years after the first ruby lidar
used in atmospheric probing in the world and its performance was close
to the meteorological lidar developed by the Stanford Research
Institute in the USA at that time. After then, type II, III lidars
developed later came into use in succession in the probing of cloud
layer^, atmospheric optical parameters^|5^, visibility ^6" 8^,
aerosols I- 9 > 1 °} f smoke plumes dispersion^11^ and atmospheric diffusion
parameters'- 12^ etc. In 1980, the first tunable ruby lidar in China,
based on the differential absorption principle, was developed and
realized the probing of water vapour distribution in the lower
atmosphere^131
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