Lidars - Introduction

• Lidars (Light Dectection and Ranging)
• The lidar beam is very narrow, since it is basically a laser beam of visible or infrared radiation (very short wavelength).
• The primary source of scatterers for a lidar are atmospheric aerosols and air molecules.  Recall that the wavelength for the lidar transmitted energy is near/in the visible spectrum.
• Some lidars rely on absorption by atmospheric molecules