Measuring Atmospheric CO Enhancements From the 2017 British Columbia Wildfires Using a Lidar.

During the summer 2017 ASCENDS/ABoVE airborne science campaign, the NASA Goddard CO Sounder lidar overflew smoke plumes from wildfires in the British Columbia, Canada. In the flight path over Vancouver Island on 8 August 2017, the column XCO retrievals from the lidar measurements at flight altitudes around 9 km showed an average enhancement of 4 ppm from the wildfires. A comparison of these enhancements with those from the Goddard Global Chemistry Transport model suggested that the modeled CO emissions from wildfires were underestimated by more than a factor of 2.

Methane optical density measurements with an integrated path differential absorption lidar from an airborne platform.

We report on an airborne demonstration of atmospheric methane (CH) measurements with an Integrated Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) lidar using an optical parametric amplifier (OPA) and optical parametric oscillator (OPO) laser transmitter and sensitive avalanche photodiode detector. The lidar measures the atmospheric CH absorption at multiple, discrete wavelengths near 1650.96 nm.

Feasibility study of a space-based high pulse energy 2 μm CO IPDA lidar.

Sustained high-quality column carbon dioxide (CO) atmospheric measurements from space are required to improve estimates of regional and continental-scale sources and sinks of CO. Modeling of a space-based 2 μm, high pulse energy, triple-pulse, direct detection integrated path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar was conducted to demonstrate CO measurement capability and to evaluate random and systematic errors. Parameters based on recent technology developments in the 2 μm laser and state-of-the-art HgCdTe (MCT) electron-initiated avalanche photodiode (e-APD) detection system were incorporated in this model.