Shipborne lidar investigations of aerosol fields in the atmosphere over Lake Baikal

We present some results of lidar investigations of the vertical structure of aerosol fields based on the data array obtained during the shipborne mission on Lake Baikal in July-August 2002. An analysis of longitudinal and cross sections revealed a significant effect of local orography on the field structure. The correlation analysis of the vertical distribution of the optical depth along the ship route with the spatial profile of the Primorskii Ridge mountains was conducted. It was found that the highest correlation is observed in the lower atmospheric layer from 0.5 to 1.5-km height. In the southern part of the lake, small-scale perturbations that are formed behind the ridge spread only up to the central part of the lake. The characteristic feature of the low-frequency atmospheric oscillations is that a linear frequency trend (increase of the oscillation frequency in the direction from the west to the east) occurs.