Instruments
Small Mobile Ozone Lidar (a.k.a. SMOL)
General
This Differential Absorption ozone Lidar (DIAL) was designed in 2022/2023 to contribute measurements of tropospheric ozone to the Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet). Its design is inspired from the TMF tropospheric ozone lidar TMTOL, using a quadrupled Nd: YAG laser to emit at 266 nm, then shifting to 289 nm and 299 nm using Raman cells.
The system uses the Rayleigh scattering technique, and includes 6 receiving channels (3 channels operating at the ozone-absorbed wavelength of 289 nm and 3 channels at the weakly-absorbed wavelength of 299 nm). The ozone DIAL pairs of 266/289 and 289/299 nm allow ozone retrievals between 150 m a.g.l. and 10 km. a.g.l. The system is optimized to measure in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL), and up to the tropopause. Its simple design with off-the-shelf components keeps its cost capped around $80,0000, and its compact design enables high versatility for deployment on the field in a network-like configuration.
Instrument/dataset characteristics:
- Instrument vertical sampling resolution: 6-m
- Vertical range: ozone: 150 m - 10 km a.g.l.
- Instrument temporal resolution: Anything from 3-min to several hours
- Typical measurement frequency: On campaign basis.
- Designed to continuously run for multiple consecutive days (or weeks) during field campaigns
- Typical total number of measurement hours per year: 500+
References
Chouza, F., et al. (2025), The Small Mobile Ozone Lidar (SMOL): instrument description and first results, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 18(2), 405-419. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-405-2025