Fig. 1. Rayleigh Lidar signal (black) at Zhongshan Station and signal (red) simulated using CIRA-86 temperature

Fig. 2. Temperature profile retrieved using the HC method (blue) compared with the CIRA-86 temperature profile (red), which is treated as the true state (left panel) and percentage difference between the retrieved temperature and the true temperature

Fig. 3. Temperature retrieval results and temperature difference percentages for different reference temperatures at a reference height of 96 km

Fig. 4. Temperature Jacobian matrix normalized by atmospheric number density (left panel), and temperature Jacobian matrix at an altitude of 50 km (right panel)

Fig. 5. Averaging kernel matrix (left panel) and vertical resolution of the retrieved temperature (right panel), the horizontal dash-dotted line indicates the altitude above which the retrieval is significantly influenced by the a priori temperature profile

Fig. 6. Temperature profile retrieved using the OEM (blue), with the CIRA-86 temperature profile treated as the true state (red) and the MSISE-00 temperature profile used as the a priori (orange) (left panel), and the percentage difference between the retrieved temperature and the true temperature (right panel)

Fig. 7. Influence of various parameters on the uncertainty of inversion temperature

Fig. 8. OEM temperature inversion results under different reference pressures (left figure) and the temperature difference percentages (right figure)

Fig. 9. The temperature profile obtained by inversion of measured signals using OEM (red) and HC (blue) methods (left figure), and the temperature difference percentages retrieved by the two methods (right figure)