Vaisala DIAL Atmospheric Profiler DA10 is a high-performance differential absorption lidar (DIAL) instrument for enhanced severe weather forecasting and climate modeling with advanced, real-time water vapor profiles. DA10 offers continuous and unattended real-time water vapor profiling for operational observation networks.
DA10 measures the water vapor content in the atmosphere from low altitudes up to the top of the boundary layer or cloud base layer - whichever is lower. The advanced real-time water vapor profiles can be used as input to severe weather nowcasting and, for example, for the possible detection of atmospheric rivers.
DA10 is essentially a ceilometer and a water vapor profiler combined. It provides cloud height information and real-time high-quality water vapor profiling data, as well as atmospheric profiles such as the attenuated backscatter profile.
The measurement data is available in the universal and accessible netCDF format. This allows for integration to various types of systems, but also sharing of files across organizations. The netCDF data includes both measurement data and monitoring data. This makes the data easily available for numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.