Application of sodars in the study and monitoring of the environment

Application of acoustic sounders (sodars) to study the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) began in the early 1970s. During the last two decades the scope of sodars applications enlarged considerably. The proceedings of eleven symposia of the International Society for Remote Acoustic Sensing of the Atmosphere and Oceans (ISARS) are a unique collection of papers, where all directions of the sodar use since 1981 are presented. In this paper, a review of sodar applications to atmospheric research is presented based on materials published in these proceedings in the following fields: conditions of microwave and light propagation; regional climatology of the ABL; air pollution meteorology and weather forecast; mesoscale phenomena under stable and unstable stratification; micrometeorology; peculiarities of the ABL in remote and complex terrain.