MPD

The Micro Pulse Differential Absorption Lidar (MPD) data were collected during field campaigns and testing periods by the Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL).

The differential absorption lidar (DIAL) technique uses two separate laser wavelengths: an absorbing wavelength (online) and a non-absorbing wavelength (offline). The ratio of the range-resolved backscattered signals between the online and offline wavelengths is proportional to the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, which allows the retrieval of absolute humidity profiles above the lidar site.

This observation converter takes absolute humidity (g/m3) profiles retrieved from the MPD data and converts them to the format used by DART. The obs_converter/MPD/work/convert_to_text.py script reads the netCDF files from each MPD site and combines them into text files, one for each date and time. The obs_converter/MPD/work/MPD_text_to_obs program translates the text files to the DART obs_seq.out format.

Test data for a single site and an example output can be downloaded from https://www.image.ucar.edu/pub/DART/MPD/MPD.tar.gz

For more details of the retrieval and quality control process, and inquire about data availability for your research project, please contact Tammy Weckwerth at EOL, NSF NCAR.