Down looking lidar inversion constrained by ocean reflection and forward scatter of laser light

The laser aureole at 1.06 microm resulting from the redirection of light by sea surface reflection and forward scatter through maritime boundary layer aerosols to a sensor high above the ocean surface is modeled for profiles with typical North Atlantic aerosol size distributions. The magnitude of this laser aureole is highly correlated with the optical depth for these profiles. This optical depth, estimated from the laser aureole, is used to adjust the power of the extinction-backscatter relationship in a Bernoulli-Riccati lidar inversion. Using a lognormal marine aerosol model, 150 profiles of aerosol size distributions are selected by their probability of occurrence in the North Atlantic boundary layer. For these profiles, the lidar inversion using the estimated optical depth predicted the surface extinction 5 times better than the lidar inversions using a climatological backscatter-extinction relationship.