Measurements of contributors to atmospheric climate change
Document ID: 196
Philbrick, C. Russell1,2
Hallen, Hans D.1
1 North Carolina State University, Department of Physics, Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
2 North Carolina State University, Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
Presented: 19th ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and Related Research
Bad Reichenhall, Germany, 7–11 June 2009
Abstract
Our goal of better understanding the changes in Earth’s climate requires improved atmospheric sensors and techniques for measuring the primary causal factors: aerosol optical scattering and greenhouse gas absorption. We describe extensions of our lidar sensor developments that use a satellite based receiver and ground based lasers to provide a major advance in our ability to measure the concentrations of chemical species and the aerosol properties. The aerosol instrument proposed for these studies uses a multi-λ laser pointed ahead of the satellite to measure the optical scattering on segments of arcs along the orbit to characterize aerosol properties. A ground-based MWIR supercontinuum laser is the source for measuring the path-integrated absorption of chemical species to determine concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the 3-5 μm region using a spectrometer on the satellite.
| Citation: | "Measurements of contributors to atmospheric climate change", Philbrick, C. R., H. D. Hallen, Proceedings of 19th ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and Related Research, Vol. ESA SP-671, ESA Proceedings, 2009, pp. 142 - 146 |