Effect of multiple scattering in the lidar measurement of tropospheric aerosol extinction profiles

This paper describes the lidar inversion of the tropospheric aerosol extinction profiles under the influence of multiple-scattering effects for various elevation angles of lidar detection. A single-scattering lidar equation is employed to analyze lidar signals with multiple-scattering contributions that are calculated by the Monte Carlo method for given atmospheric conditions. We calculate errors in the optical thickness from the results with and without multiple-scattering effects. It is found that the errors vary, in a range of 2-18% according to the optical thickness variation of 0.19-3.8. The dependence of the error on the field-of-view angle of the lidar observation is also discussed.