Up to now, the extraction of extinction and backscatter coefficients from a lidar signa] or lidar inversion has been done in homogeneous atmospheres by means of the slope method. Yet, it will be shown that due to its nonlinear behaviour, it can become inaccurate in poor signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). To counteract these problems an altemate method based on least squares minimization is presented. The inversion error is also assessed as a function of the SNR ratio and the visibility margin. A further method presented is Klett's analytical solution, which has proved to be the most suitable in inhomogeneous profiles. Again, a parametric study of the inversion error will account for errors in the estimated boundary value of extinction, missadjustments in the backscatter-extinction relationship and SNR.

Peer Reviewed