Abstract

On June 15, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines explosively erupted, injecting large quantities of SO₂ and dust particles directly into the stratosphere. The SO₂ slowly reacted to form a concentrated and fairly thick layer of aerosol particles in the 15 to 32 km region of the stratosphere. When this layer was transported to latitudes at which a number of stratospheric lidars were operating, signals which had been dependent only on molecular scattering began to have a very large component due to Mie scattering from aerosols. Unlike Rayleigh scattering, the wavelength dependence of this Mie component is not well known.

© 1993 Optical Society of America