The atmospheric transparency measured with a LIDAR system at the Telescope Array experiment

An atmospheric transparency was measured using a LIDAR with a pulsed UV laser (355 nm) at the observation site of Telescope Array in Utah, USA. The measurement at night for two years in 2007–2009 revealed that the extinction coefficient by aerosol at the ground level is 0.033−0.012+0.016km−1 and the vertical aerosol optical depth at 5 km above the ground is 0.035−0.013+0.019. A model of the altitudinal aerosol distribution was built based on these measurements for the analysis of atmospheric attenuation of the fluorescence light generated by ultra high energy cosmic rays.