Water vapor and carbon dioxide are the most dominant greenhouse gases directly contributing to the Earth's radiation budget and global warming. A performance evaluation of an airborne triple-pulsed integrated path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar system for simultaneous and independent monitoring of atmospheric water vapor and carbon dioxide column amounts is presented. This system leverages a state-of-the-art Ho:Tm:YLF triple-pulse laser transmitter operating at 2.05 μm wavelength. The transmitter provides wavelength tuning and locking capabilities for each pulse. The IPDA lidar system leverages a low risk and technologically mature receiver system based on InGaAs pin detectors. Measurement methodology and wavelength setting are discussed. The IPDA lidar return signals and error budget are analyzed for airborne operation on-board the NASA B-200. Results indicate that the IPDA lidar system is capable of measuring water vapor and carbon dioxide differential optical depth with 0.5% and 0.2% accuracy, respectively, from an altitude of 8 km to the surface and with 10 s averaging. Provided availability of meteorological data, in terms of temperature, pressure, and relative humidity vertical profiles, the differential optical depth conversion into weighted-average column dry-air volume-mixing ratio is also presented.
Field experiments were conducted to test and evaluate the initial atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement capability of airborne, high-energy, double-pulsed, 2-μm integrated path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar. This IPDA was designed, integrated, and operated at the NASA Langley Research Center on-board the NASA B-200 aircraft. The IPDA was tuned to the CO2 strong absorption line at 2050.9670 nm, which is the optimum for lower tropospheric weighted column measurements. Flights were conducted over land and ocean under different conditions. The first validation experiments of the IPDA for atmospheric CO2 remote sensing, focusing on low surface reflectivity oceanic surface returns during full day background conditions, are presented. In these experiments, the IPDA measurements were validated by comparison to airborne flask air-sampling measurements conducted by the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. IPDA performance modeling was conducted to evaluate measurement sensitivity and bias errors. The IPDA signals and their variation with altitude compare well with predicted model results. In addition, off-off-line testing was conducted, with fixed instrument settings, to evaluate the IPDA systematic and random errors. Analysis shows an altitude-independent differential optical depth offset of 0.0769. Optical depth measurement uncertainty of 0.0918 compares well with the predicted value of 0.0761. IPDA CO2 column measurement compares well with model-driven, near-simultaneous air-sampling measurements from the NOAA aircraft at different altitudes. With a 10-s shot average, CO2 differential optical depth measurement of 1.0054±0.0103 was retrieved from a 6-km altitude and a 4-GHz on-line operation. As compared to CO2 weighted-average column dry-air volume mixing ratio of 404.08 ppm, derived from air sampling, IPDA measurement resulted in a value of 405.22±4.15 ppm with 1.02% uncertainty and 0.28% additional bias. Sensitivity analysis of environmental systematic errors correlates the additional bias to water vapor. IPDA ranging resulted in a measurement uncertainty of <3 m.
A 2-µm backscatter lidar system has been developed by utilizing tunable pulsed laser and infrared phototransistor for the transmitter and the receiver, respectively. To validate the system, the 2-µm atmospheric backscatter profiles were compared to profiles obtained at 1 and 0.5 µm using avalanche photodiode and photomultiplier tube, respectively. Consequently, a methodology is proposed to compare the performance of different lidar systems operating at different wavelengths through various detection technologies. The methodology is based on extracting the system equivalent detectivity and comparing it to that of the detectors, as well as the ideal background detectivity. Besides, the 2-µm system capability for atmospheric CO 2 temporal profiling using the differential absorption lidar (DIAL) technique was demonstrated. This was achieved by tuning the laser at slightly different wavelengths around the CO 2 R22 absorption line in the 2.05-µm band. CO 2 temporal profiles were also compared to in situ measurements. Preliminary results indicated average mixing ratios close to 390 ppm in the atmospheric boundary layer with 3.0% precision. The development of this system is an initial step for developing a high-resolution, high-precision direct-detection atmospheric CO 2 DIAL system. A successful development of this system would be a valuable tool in obtaining and validating global atmospheric CO 2 measurements.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.