Interpretation of data on laser sensing of aerosol atmosphere from space

A single-frequency lidar, using aerosol scattering as an informative component, is the simplest and reliable facility for remote sensing of the atmosphere. The information on vertical distribution of atmospheric aerosol which can be obtained using such a lidar is necessary for investigating the physics of atmospheric processes and forecast of optical state of the atmosphere. At the same time, the interpretation of data on single-frequency sounding is associated with some difficulties of fundamental character, mainly due to insufficient software of the experiment. Under such conditions the problems of optimal processing of lidar returns aiming at extracting the useful information on aerosol are of great importance, especially if one takes into account the hindering effects of atmospheric background and optical noises. This paper presents a statistical approach to this problem, and the possibilities of single-frequency sounding from space are analyzed.