The Compact Rayleigh Autonomous Lidar (CORAL) for Middle Atmosphere Research

Kurzfassung

The Compact Rayleigh Autonomous Lidar (CORAL) is a stratosphere/mesosphere temperature lidar which was recently developed by the German Aerospace Center. The primary objective of the instrument is automatic collection of high-resolution observations of atmospheric gravity waves. In order to achieve this goal, CORAL features several technologies which are new to mesospheric lidars: diode-pumped laser, highly integrated electronics, redundant computer systems, advanced software with fault protection algorithms and artificial intelligence. The implementation of these technologies make CORAL the first instrument of a new class of truly automatic middle atmosphere lidar systems. Since December 2016, several test-runs as well as regular observations totaling more than 1000 hours have been carried out by CORAL. This talk gives an overview of the instrument and its capabilities and presents examples showing observations of atmospheric gravity waves as well as first scientific results.