Determination of mixing layer heights from ceilometer data

The Vaisala ceilometer LD40 is an eye-safe commercial lidar. It is designed originally to detect cloud base heights and vertical visibility for aviation safety purposes. The instrument was operated continuously at different measurement campaigns to detect mixing layer height from aerosol backscatter profiles. First results with the CT25K ceilometer were presented last year in the paper SPIE 5235-64 from the environmental measuring campaign in the frame of the BMBF-funded project VALIUM in Hanover, Germany, investigating the air pollution in a street canyon and the surrounding with various sensors. A software for routine retrieval of mixing layer height (MLH) from ceilometer data was developed. A comparison with mixing layer height retrievals from a SODAR and a wind-temperature-radar (WTR) operated in the urban region of Munich will be shown. The three instruments give information that partly agree and partly complement each other. The ceilometer gives information on the aerosol content of the air and the WTR provides a direct measurement of the vertical temperature distribution in the boundary layer. The WTR and the ceilometer add information on the moisture structure of the boundary layer that is not detected by the SODAR which gives information on the thermal structure. On the other hand this comparison validates known techniques by which the MLH is derived from SODAR data. In the absence of low clouds and precipitation ceilometers can estimate the mixing-layer-height fairly well. The potential of the ceilometer, being the smallest instrument among the used ones as LIDAR, SODAR and WTR, will be discussed to be used in future MLH studies.