Software for retrieving the ozone altitude profiles from data of atmospheric laser sensing

In the report, we describe the software developed to retrieve the ozone altitude profiles from data of lidar measurements. The software is written in the programming language C#. At present, the C# language is one of the most advanced and modern programming languages. Many programs are written in this language since it is very easy to understand. The software makes it possible to calculate the ozone altitude profiles according to the method of differential absorption and scattering for three wavelength pairs 272/289 nm, 299/341 nm, and 308/353 nm. These wavelength pairs were chosen in view of the availability of lidar measurement data. The software has a suitable graphical interface, which displays all the steps of retrieving the ozone profiles in real time. The software makes it possible: to read off the lidar data and write the retrieval results in ASCII format; and smooth the lidar signals and the retrieval results with sliding averaging. The temperature correction of zone absorption coefficients is introduced in the software to reduce the retrieval errors. The aerosol backscattering is several times stronger than molecular backscattering when aerosol loading of the atmosphere is large; therefore, the retrieved ozone profile is substantially distorted when the scattering and attenuating properties of the atmosphere at the sensing wavelengths are not taken into consideration. An aerosol correction is introduced in this software. The latitudinally average seasonal model values of the altitudinal distribution of temperature and molecular backscattering coefficient for winter and summer are introduced in the software for the calculation.