Comparative Analysis of Selected Ceilometers for Practice and Academic Purposes

This article is devoted to the analysis and comparison of two meteorological instruments, ceilometers. The aim of the paper is to recommend a more suitable design and principle design used in the construction of two different types of ceilometers commonly used in Europe, based on the recommendations of a group of experts with more than ten years of experience in aviation weather measurement and observation. With increasing air traffic density, in some areas located below the flight paths, Cirrus clouds may form under appropriate meteorological conditions, which do not dissipate immediately but expand into layers. This artificial cloud formation changes the optical transmittance of the atmosphere, and this may affect climate change in the region. Although the ceilometer is primarily designed to detect the height of the cloud base using laser technology, after some adjustments, the raw laser output can be interpreted as the optical transmittance of the atmosphere. The data thus measured can be used to quantify climate change in the areas concerned. As part of preparing the project for the EU Horizon 2020 challenge, the team of experts decided to systematically address this issue. Identifying a suitable monitoring facility for the presence of man-made cloud due to air traffic is a crucial step in the experimental verification of climate change in a given region and the subsequent modeling of possible climate scenarios for the affected areas.