Command line interface
alcf calibrate
alcf calibrate - calibrate ALC backscatter
Calibration based the O’Connor et al. (2004) method of lidar ratio (LR) in fully opaque stratocumulus clouds.
Usage: alcf calibrate <type> <time_periods> <input> <output>
type: lidar type (see Types below)time_periods: file containing calibration time periods of stratocumulus clouds in the backscatter profiles (see Time periods below)input: input directory containing NetCDF files (the output ofalcf lidar)output: output calibration file
Types:
chm15k: Lufft CHM 15kcl31: Vaisala CL31cl51: Vaisala CL51minimpl: Sigma Space MiniMPLmpl: Sigma Space MPL
Time periods file:
A text file containting start and end time (see Time format below) of a time period separated by whitespace, one time period per line:
<start> <end>
<start> <end>
...
where start is the start time and end is the end time.
Time format:
“YYYY-MM-DD[THH:MM[:SS]]”, where YYYY is year, MM is month, DD is day, HH is hour, MM is minute, SS is second. Example: 2000-01-01T00:00:00.
Examples:
alcf calibrate time_periods.txt lidar calibration.txt
Read time periods from time_periods.txt, lidar profiles from the directory
lidar and write the calibration coefficient to calibration.txt.

ALCF