Abstract
Since 2005, the high-performance multiparameter Raman lidar RAMSES (Raman lidar for atmospheric moisture sensing) for water vapor, temperature, cloud and aerosol measurements is part of the broad suite of active and passive remote-sensing instruments monitoring the atmosphere at the German Meteorological Services observatory in Lindenberg. Initially housed in a 20-foot container, continued expansion of RAMSES made accommodation of the instrument increasingly difficult, and caused problems in air-conditioning. For these reasons, a new lidar facility was built on site in 2013. It is now home to RAMSES, and it also provides extra laboratory space for (lidar) experiments. The Lindenberg lidar facility is described in detail. One of its features is the precision air-conditioning system which is designed to keep the temperature field of the RAMSES room stable within 1 K at all times. Migration from the container to the new building offered an opportunity to make changes to the RAMSES instrument itself. For instance, stray light suppression was further improved, selection of photomultiplier tubes was optimized, and the near-range receiver was redesigned to enhance its daytime capabilities. Further, in addition to the water spectrometer for calibrated measurements of cloud Raman backscatter-coefficient spectra, a second spectrometer was implemented for studies of the fluorescence spectra of atmospheric aerosols. At the conference, these technical modifications are discussed, and first measurement examples with the improved lidar are presented.
