A Rayleigh-Raman lidar has been operating at Australia's Davis Station in Antarctica since early 2001. The lidar is part of a suite of instruments making measurements of various processes from the lower atmosphere to the edge of space. Our lidar is the only such instrument in Antarctica that is currently capable of daytime measurements and reaching the mesopause region (80-95 km height).
In this talk I will outline the design of the lidar and then highlight recent results, focussing on the climate of the polar atmosphere, properties of Polar Stratospheric Clouds, long-distance aerosol transport, and studies of atmospheric waves. In doing so, I will mention our validation programme which involves use of data from the Aura and CALIPSO satellite missions, and our involvement in the ORACLE-O3 International Polar Year programme which is investigating the evolution of stratospheric aerosols using matched lidar measurements.
