Lead Scientist Abstract

 

ARM-FIRE Water Vapor Experiment

The Water Vapor Working Group conducted a collaborative effort between NASA and the ARM Water Vapor Working Group (overlapping the Fall SCM IOP) focusing on the accurate measurement of upper tropospheric water vapor.

In addition to the ARM raman lidar and Vaisala RS-80 radiosondes, the following guest instruments were located at the SGP central facility:

  • differential absorption lidar (DIAL) from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Hamburg, Germany
  • scanning raman lidar from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland
  • scanning atmospheric emitted radiance interferometer (AERI) spectrometer from the University of Wisconsin
  • Meteolabor "snow white" chilled mirror radiosondes from NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Virginia.

In addition to the ground-based instruments, the NASA DC-8 provided an airborne platform for the following instruments:

  • differential absorption lidar (LASE) from NASA LaRC
  • cryogenic chilled mirror hygrometer from NASA LaRC
  • fast-response ozone sensor from NASA LaRC

Scientific hypothesis: 1. Aircraft with continuous profiling capabilities from DIAL, which parallel the ground-based CART Raman lidar capabilities, will be sufficient to handle sampling related problems to compare observations with the Raman lidar and radiosondes.

  1. Coupling the absolute calibration of DIAL with state-of-the- art in-situ sensors is adequate airborne truth

  2. Nighttime Raman lidar has adequate sensitivity and stability to transfer IOP-based aircraft truth to long-term observations and to satellite remote sensing validation. More details are given in the Science Plan.