Synonyms: 
Water Vapor
Water

NDACC MLO FTIR

Solar viewing Fourier Transform Interferometer (FTIR). This is a ground based instrument stationed at the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO). It operates daily in an autonomous mode taking middle infrared solar spectra of the terrestrial atmosphere. It began operation in 1995 and has run continuously since. The data are used for long term studies of many trace species in the atmosphere. Its operated as part of the Network for the Detection for Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC www.ndacc.org). See https://www2.acom.ucar.edu/irwg for information on the network and https://www2.acom.ucar.edu/irwg for info on PI J. Hannigan. Data are publicly available at www.ndacc.org. Data products consist of retrievals from the remote sensing spectra of vertical profiles of CO, CH4, ClONO2, HCOOH, C2H6, HCN, HCl, HF, HNO3, H2O, HDO, OCS, N2O, O3, H2CO. Other species are available.

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Compact Raman Lidar

CRL can provide simultaneous water vapor, temperature, aerosol, and cloud profiles within the planetary boundary layer (PBL) from UWKA, NSF/NCAR C-130, and NOAA P-3. It uses a compact, lightweight transmitting-receiving system (12-inch telescope). Although the 50-mJ CRL laser limits water vapor measurement to short-range under high solar background conditions, past CRL measurements demonstrated that CRL measurements offer excellent measurements to characterize PBL structures from airborne platforms.   CRL enhances PBL observations at horizontal resolutions ranging from ~100 m to ~1 km and can revolutionize a range of atmospheric processes studies. These include: advancing our understanding of small-scale interactions between clouds and their environment, investigating air-sea and air-land interactions; documenting boundary layer structure over heterogeneous surfaces and under cloudy conditions; examining the mesoscale atmospheric environments and dynamics.

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University of Wyoming King Air, NSF/NCAR C-130, WP-3D Orion - NOAA
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Multi-function Airborne Raman Lidar

MARLi was an NSF-MRI funded new instrument development to provide water vapor, temperature, aerosol, and cloud profiles within the planetary boundary layer (PBL). MARLi was successfully flight-tested on the UWKA and the NSF/NCAR C-130 for over sixty-hours in the summer of 2016.  
MARLi transforms our capability to observe the atmosphere at horizontal resolutions ranging from ~100 m to ~1 km and can revolutionize a range of atmospheric processes studies. These include: advancing our understanding of small-scale interactions between clouds and their environment, investigating air-sea and air-land interactions; documenting boundary layer structure over heterogeneous surfaces and under cloudy conditions; examining the mesoscale atmospheric environments and dynamics.

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NSF/NCAR C-130, University of Wyoming King Air, P-3 Orion - WFF
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Chicago Water Isotope Spectrometer

Chi-WIS is a mid-infrared tunable diode laser off-axis integrated cavity output absorption spectrometer (ICOS) instrument for measurement of H2O and HDO in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. The high precision of the measurement allows detection of small changes in the HDO/H2O ratio that can be used to study water transport pathways and characterize the extent to which convection-driven water vapor perturbations propagate through the UT/LS to contribute to the overall stratospheric water budget. Chi-WIS participated in the 2017 StratoClim campaign onboard the M-55 Geophysica high altitude research aircraft measuring the isotopic composition of water vapor between 12 and 20 kilometers inside the Asian Summer Monsoon anticyclone.

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Airborne Emission Spectrometer

Targeting Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) measuring infrared spectra from 4.5 to 13.4 µm. AES was the airborne testbed for the EOS/Aura TES instrument and operated ~1994-2000.

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G2301-m

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G2301-f

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Carbon monOxide Measurement from Ames

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NOAA Water

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Spectrometer for Sky-Scanning, Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research

4STAR (Spectrometers for Sky-Scanning Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research; Dunagan et al., 2013) is an airborne sun-sky spectrophotometer measuring direct solar beam transmittance (i.e., 4STAR determines direct solar beam transmission by detecting direct solar irradiance) and narrow field-of-view sky radiance to retrieve and remotely sense column-integrated and, in some cases, vertically resolved information on aerosols, clouds, and trace gases. The 4STAR team is a world leader in airborne sun-sky photometry, building on 4STAR’s predecessor instrument, AATS-14 (the NASA Ames Airborne Tracking Sun photometers; Matsumoto et al., 1987; Russell et al. 1999, and cited in more than 100 publication) and greatly expanding aerosol observations from the ground-based AERONET network of sun-sky photometers (Holben et al., 1998) and the Pandora network of ground-based direct-sun and sky spectrometer (e.g, Herman et al., 2009).

4STAR is used to quantify the attenuated solar light (from 350 to 1650 nm) and retrieve properties of various atmospheric constituents: spectral Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from ultraviolet to the shortwave infrared (e.g., LeBlanc et al., 2020, Shinozuka et al., 2013); aerosol intensive properties - Single Scattering Albedo (SSA; e.g., Pistone et al., 2019), asymmetry parameter, scattering phase function, absorption angstrom exponent, size distribution, and index of refraction; various column trace gas components (NO2, Ozone, Water Vapor; e.g., Segal-Rosenheimer et al., 2014, with potential for SO2 and CH2O); and cloud optical depth, effective radius and thermodynamic phase (e.g., LeBlanc et al., 2015).

Some examples of the science questions that 4STAR have pursued in the past and will continue to address:

  • What is the Direct Aerosol Radiative Effect on climate and its uncertainty? (1)
  • How much light is absorbed by aerosol emitted through biomass burning? (1)
  • How does heating of the atmosphere by absorbing aerosol impact large scale climate and weather patterns? (1)
  • How does aerosol spatial consistency of extensive and intensive properties compare? (2)
  • How does the presence of aerosol impact Earth’s radiative transfer, with co-located high concentration of trace gas? (3, 5)
  • What is the impact of air quality from long-range transport of both aerosol particulates and column NO2 and Ozone, and their evolution? (3, 6)
  • What are the governing properties and spatial patterns of local and transported aerosol? (1)
  • How are cloud properties impacted near the sea-ice edge? (4)
  • In heterogeneous environments where clouds and aerosols are present, how much solar radiation is impacted by 3D radiative transfer? And how does that impact the aerosol properties? (5)

(1) ORACLES: Zuidema et al., doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00082.1., 2016; LeBlanc et al., doi:10.5194/acp-20-1565-2020, 2020; Pistone et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2019-142, 2019;Cochrane et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-6505-2019, 2019; Shinozuka et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11275-2020, 2020; Shinozuka et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11491-2020, 2020
(2) KORUS-AQ:  LeBlanc et al., doi:
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11275-2022, 2022

(3) KORUS-AQ: Herman et al., doi:10.5194/amt-11-4583-2018, 2018
(4) ARISE: Smith et al.,
https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00277.1, 2017; Segal-Rosenheimer et al., doi:10.1029/2018JD028349, 2018
(5) SEAC4RS: Song et al., doi: 10.5194/acp-16-13791-2016, 2016; Toon et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JD024297, 2016
(6
) TCAP: Shinozuka et al., doi:10.1002/2013JD020596, 2013; Segal-Rosenheimer et al., doi:10.1002/2013JD020884, 2014

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