Multistatic lidar measurements of non-spherical aerosols

Lidar is a powerful tool for measuring the vertical profiles of aerosols in the atmosphere using Rayleigh and Raman lidar techniques. Bistatic lidar can be used to obtain the angular structure of the scattered light. When the aerosols are uniformly distributed, this information can be analyzed to provide particle size distribution information. However, dusts tend to be irregularly shaped particles with varied composition. We investigate the impact of the irregular shape using optical scattering at several wavelengths, scanning electron microscopy, and T-matrix calculations. In particular, we study the rapid loss of Mie scattering resonances as the particle shape departs from spherical. Different size distributions produced by different size-cuts of Arizona Road Dust (ARD) are studied.