• Technical Conference:  05 – 10 May 2024
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LIDAR opportunities go up in smoke

By David Nugent


With airspace above Scotland and Northern Ireland closed today due to volcanic ash still belching out of Iceland, European travellers have suddenly become interested in the capabilities of airborne light detection and ranging (‘LIDAR’) systems.

True to form, CLEO/QELS presents some recent breakthroughs in LIDAR, with metrological applications specifically in mind. Presided by Joseph Buck (Lockheed Martin), the joint CLEO/QELS seminar on Standoff Laser Sensing (JThuJ) could hardly be more topical.

In an invited talk, Yuri Owechko (HRL Labs, USA) presents work on automatic recognition of diverse 3D objects and the analysis of large urban scenes using ground and aerial LIDAR sensors. I wonder if this could be applied to the monitoring of ash cloud movements?

In a second invited talk, Shane Mayor (California State University at Chico) presents a topically entitled paper: “High pulse-energy Atmospheric Aerosol LIDAR at 1.5 µm wavelength: Opportunities  for Innovation from a Meteorologist’s Perspective”. Mayor will discuss laser and optical engineering challenges and recent progress in the area of high pulse-energy direct-detection  atmospheric LIDAR near the 1.5 µm wavelength.

At its peak the airline industry lost a whopping $195 million (£130 million) per day due to the volcanic smog. By the end the European Commission estimated the total economic impact of the week-long crisis at over $3.3 billion (£2.2 billion), a sum the heavily indebted region can ill afford.

It will be interesting to see how EARLINET, the pan-European network of LIDAR stations, responds under the media spotlight. Ever since Eyjafjallajokul erupted they have produced a useful daily log of atmospheric observations around the region. Examining the EARLINET map below, it is curious to discover that the two countries most affected by the ash cloud to date, the UK and Ireland, have only one lookout station at Chilbolton. This doesn’t appear to have detracted from the usefulness of the scheme.

There is an interesting YouTube video from an unidentified French university discussing the use of LIDAR for mapping the volcanic cloud. The copyright owners don’t let their videos be embedded into other webpages, so you will need to click the link yourself. Voila!

Dr David Nugent is Founder and CEO of Elucidare Limited, a boutique technology development and investment advisory business.

Posted: 5 May 2010 by David Nugent | with 0 comments

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