LiDAR Sensing of Aerosols Induced by Air Ions

A strong correlation between the LiDAR aerosol backscattering signal and air ion concentration in an enclosed underground room is detected for the first time. Nowadays, air ions monitoring is considered to be the main tool in the search for earthquake precursors, and the revealed correlation opens interesting opportunities of using LiDARs in the search for precursors. LiDARs allow sensing the dynamics of aerosols generated by air ions as condensation nuclei on long tracks along the laser beam, compared to pointwise detection of air ions utilizing appropriate sensors.