The new MERLIN Instrument for Atmospheric CH4: Quality and Performance Monitoring

Abstract:

After water vapor and carbon dioxide, methane is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the Earth
atmosphere. The new generation space borne Lidar mission MERLIN (Methane Remote Sensing Lidar
Mission) will make very sensitive measurements of the Methane distribution with unprecedented quality,
i.e. 50km averaged methane columns with an accuracy of ~ 1%. After its launch in 2020, MERLIN will
track down sources and sinks of CH₄ on a global scale.
We will present our approach and strategy to perform one of the key ground segment work components
that support MERLIN scientific activities which is the long-term monitoring of the instrument and its
measurements. This function includes tracking the behavior of the instrument and its subsystems
overtime as well as verification and validation of the scientific data during the entire lifetime of the
mission. It mainly monitors the instrument’s performance in response to expected or unexpected natural
events or technical situations. These are achieved by analyzing the measurement data and housekeeping
information over different time frames. We will additionally show how our expertise on SCIAMACHY can
be applied to MERLIN.