Lidar Ceilometer CL61

for Aviation

Improving airport operations with precise vertical profiling data and innovative precipitation and particulate differentiation.

Enabling informed, safer airport operations

To protect people and maintain operational continuity, modern airports depend on detailed, accurate insights about atmospheric conditions. Increased weather severity and flight frequency make these insights more crucial than ever.

Vaisala’s Ceilometer CL61 enables airports and other aviation stakeholders to detect much more than cloud height, amount, and vertical visibility. Its advanced depolarization capabilities detect other important phenomena that can impact aviation safety and efficiency:

  • Icing layers aloft
  • Dust, smoke, and volcanic ash
  • Nowcasting the onset of snowfall
  • Supercooled cloud layer detection

The depolarization difference

CL61’s unique depolarization capability provides outstanding benefits unavailable with any other ceilometer:

  • Differentiates liquid and solid cloud and precipitating particles Detects the melting layer
  • Allows tracking of dust, sand, and volcanic ash layers
  • More accurately resolves mixed aerosol layers in the boundary layer
  • Improves general understanding of atmospheric conditions

To do this, CL61 uses attenuated backscatter profiles measured in two polarization directions to calculate the depolarization ratio. Its optical system allows for a high signal-to-noise ratio and enables reporting of detailed vertical profiles for the full range, up to 15.4 km (9.6 mi).

Today, CL61 is widely trusted and used for some of the most innovative aviation applications, including real-time monitoring of ongoing volcanic activity and comprehensive windshear solutions.

Vaisala team collaborating in office

Get Started with Ceilometer CL61

CL61 is unlike any other ceilometer, and it is already providing previously unattainable benefits to aviation. Contact us now to learn more how CL61 can dramatically improve your operations.

CONTACT US