A43C-3284:
Column CO2 Measurements with Intensity-Modulated Continuous-Wave Lidar System During the ASCENDS 2014 Summer Field Experiment

Thursday, 18 December 2014
Byron Meadows1, Amin R Nehrir1, Bing Lin1, Fenton W Harrison1, Jeremy T Dobler2, Susan A Kooi3, Joel F Campbell1, Michael D Obland1, Edward V Browell4 and Melissa M Yang1, (1)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (2)ITT Space Systems, LLC, Fort Wayne, IN, United States, (3)SSAI, Hampton, VA, United States, (4)NASA Langley Research Ctr, Yorktown, VA, United States
Abstract:
This paper presents an overview of the ASCENDS 2014 flight campaign results of an intensity-modulated continuous-wave (IM-CW) lidar system operating at 1.57 µm for measurements of column CO2 over a wide variety of geographic regions. The 2007 National Research Council’s Decadal Survey of Earth Science and Applications from Space recommended Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) as a mid-term, Tier II, space mission to address global sources, sinks, and transport of atmospheric CO2. As part of the development of a capability for the NASA ASCENDS mission, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) and Exelis, Inc. have been collaborating to develop, demonstrate and mature the IM-CW lidar approach for measuring atmospheric column CO2 mixing ratios from a space platform using the integrated path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar technique with preferential weighting of the CO2 measurements to the mid to lower troposphere. The Multi-Functional Fiber Laser Lidar (MFLL), a system developed as a technology demonstrator for the ASCENDS mission, has been used to demonstrate high precision column CO2 retrievals from various aircraft platforms. The MFLL operates using a novel IM-CW IPDA approach to make simultaneous CO2 and O2 column measurements in the 1.57-micron and 1.26-micron spectral regions, respectively, to derive the column-average CO2 dry-air mixing ratios. Measurements from the 2014 summer field experiment focused on advancing CO2 & O2 measurement technologies under day and night conditions in realistic environments, assessing CO2 emissions over large metropolitan areas, observing and evaluating CO2 drawdown and diurnal trends over large agricultural regions, obtaining reflectance data and CO2 & O2 measurements over rough ocean surfaces with high surface wind speeds (~10 m/s), and carrying out CO2 & O2 intercomparisons with OCO-2 and GOSAT over the western United States. Initial results from MFLL for the aforementioned flight campaign objectives will be presented where precision and accuracy of the CO2 and O2 optical depths, as well as the column-average CO2 mixing ratios, will be evaluated with respect to in-situ aircraft measurements of CO2 and meteorological state parameters.