Remote Sensing of Hydrogen Sulfide Molecules in the Atmosphere by a Raman Lidar from Space

Abstract

The results of numerical solution of the lidar equation for Raman scattering of light by molecules of hydrogen sulphide in the direction of 180° under detecting molecules of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere with concentration at a level of 1016 cm^–3 from a platform in space at heights of the order of hundreds of kilometers in the synchronous photon counting mode have been presented. It is shown that, for such a variant of a lidar and level of concentration of the investigated molecules, the duration of measurement at a wavelength of the laser radiation of 405 nm and altitude range of 100–600 km lies in the range of 0.14–4.9 s. The development of new schemes of lidars opens up additional possibilities for remote detection of low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide molecules from space.