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Synonyms: 
DC8
DC-8
NASA DC8
NASA DC-8 -AFRC
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Scanning Actinic Flux Spectroradiometers

The SAFS instruments determine wavelength dependent actinic flux from 280-420 nm. The actinic flux in combination with the absorption cross section and quantum yield molecular data will be used to calculate the photolysis frequencies of multiple photochemically important molecular processes, including O3, NO2, HONO, CH2O, H2O2, CH3OOH, HNO3, PAN, CH3NO3, CH3CH2NO3, and CH3COCH3.

The SAFS measurement is based on a 2p steradian hemisphere hemispherical quartz light collector, a double monochromator, and a low dark current photomultiplier. The monochromator employs dual 2400 G/mm gratings which produce a 1 nm FWHM spectral resolution and very low straylight. The instrument package on the aircraft includes two independent, but time synchronized (IRIG-B) spectroradiometer systems to measure the up- and down-welling fluxes in a 10 second scan time. Summing these produces the spherically integrated actinic flux.

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Scanning High-Resolution Interferometer Sounder

The Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS) is a scanning interferometer which measures emitted thermal radiation at high spectral resolution between 3.3 and 18 microns The measured emitted radiance is used to obtain temperature and water vapor profiles of the Earth's atmosphere in clear-sky conditions. S-HIS produces sounding data with 2 kilometer resolution (at nadir) across a 40 kilometer ground swath from a nominal altitude of 20 kilometers onboard a NASA ER-2 or Global Hawk.

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Particle Analysis By Laser Mass Spectrometry

The NOAA PALMS instrument measures single-particle aerosol composition using UV laser ablation to generate ions that are analyzed with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer.  The PALMS size range is approximately 150 to >3000 nm and encompasses most of the accumulation and coarse mode aerosol volume. Individual aerosol particles are classified into compositional classes.  The size-dependent composition data is combined with aerosol counting instruments from Aerosol Microphysical Properties (AMP), the Langley Aerosol Research Group Experiment (LARGE), and other groups to generate quantitative, composition-resolved aerosol concentrations.  Background tropospheric concentrations of climate-relevant aerosol including mineral dust, sea salt, and biomass burning particles are the primary foci for the ATom campaigns.  PALMS also provides a variety of compositional tracers to identify aerosol sources, probe mixing state, track particle aging, and investigate convective transport and cloud processing.

*_Standard data products_**: *

Particle type number fractions: sulfate/organic/nitrate mixtures, biomass burning, EC, sea salt, mineral dust, meteoric, alkali salts, heavy fuel combustion, and other. Sampling times range from 1-5 mins.

*_Advanced data products_**:*

Number, surface area, volume, and mass concentrations of the above particle types. Total sulfate and organic mass concentrations. Relative and absolute abundance of various chemical markers and aerosol sub-components: methanesulfonic acid, sulfate acidity, organic oxidation level, iodine, bromine, organosulfates, pyridine, and other species.

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Passive Active L- and S-band Sensor

PALS is a combined polarimetric radiometer and NASA licensed radar sharing a rotating planar array antenna. The PALS instrument includes a combined L-band radiometer and scatterometer , operating at 1.413 GHz and 1.26 GHz respectively. It was designed and built to investigate the benefits of combining passive and active microwave sensors for Ocean salinity and Soil moisture remote sensing. It is the prototype for the Aquarius and SMAP missions and its flexible design is compatible with many aircraft.

The PALS radar and radiometer time share a dual pole, dual frequency planner array antenna. The antenna configuration can be fixed or rotating. It provides scalable resolution, between 3,000 and 20,000 feet AGL. It is an Aquarius and SMAP test bed.

PALS has flown on the NCAR C-130, NASA’s P-3 and Twin Otter International’s, Twin Otter. It is a very mature instrument, and has flown more than 800 hours, in support of NASA campaigns.

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PAN and Trace Hydrohalocarbon ExpeRiment

PANTHER uses Gas Chromatography with Electron Capture Detection and (GC-ECD) and Gas Chromatography with Mass Selective Detection (GC-MSD) to measure numerous trace gases, including methyl halides, HCFCs, peroxyacetyl nitrate, nitrous oxide, SF6, CFC-12, CFC-11, Halon-1211, methyl chloroform, carbon tetrachloride.

3 ECDs with packed columns (OV-101, Porapak-Q, molecular sieve).

1 ECD with a TE (thermal electric) cooled RTX-200 capillary column.

2-channel MSD (mass selective detector). The MSD analyzes two independent samples air concentrated onto TE cooled Haysep traps, which are then heated to desorb the analytes and separate using through two temperature programmed RTX-624 capillary columns.

With the exception of PAN, all channels of chromatography are normalized to a stable in-flight calibration gas references to NOAA scales. The PAN data are normalized to an in-flight PAN source of ≈ 100 ppt with ±5 % reproducibility. This source is generated by efficient photolytic conversion of NO in the presence of acetone. Detector non-linearity is taken out by lab calibrations for all molecules.

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Dual-Frequency Airborne Precipitation Radar

The Second Generation Precipitation Radar (PR-2) is a dual-frequency, Doppler, dual-polarization radar system.

The airborne PR-2 system includes a real-time pulse compression processor, a fully-functional control and timing unit, and a very compact LO/IF module, all of which could be used in spaceborne applications.

The RF circuitry can be divided into two categories: circuits operating at frequencies of less than 1.5 GHz and circuits operating at frequencies above 1.5 GHz. The lower frequency (below 1.5 GHz) circuitry is all contained in a single unit, the local oscillator / intermediate frequency (LO/IF) module. This unit converts transmit chirp signals from 15 MHz up to 1405 MHz and downconverts received IF signals from 1405 MHz to 5 MHz. The unit contains both upconversion channels and all four receive channels and fits into the equivalent of a double wide 6U-VME card.

The RF front-end electronics are unique to the airborne PR-2 design and consist of five units: one local oscillator / up converter (LO/U) unit, two TWTAs and two waveguide front end (WGFE) units. In the DC-8 installation, the two TWTAs are stacked vertically in a standard rack with the LO/U in between them and the two WGFEs are mounted on top of the antenna pressure box, near the antenna feed. A calibration loop is included for each channel. This feeds some of the transmit power to the receiver, allowing in-flight variations of the transmit power and receiver gain to be monitored and removed from the data.

The digital electronics consists of a control and timing unit (CTU), an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG), and a data processor. The CTU generates the pulse timing and all other timing signals. It also provides control signals to RF. The AWG is loaded with a digital version of the linear FM chirp that is to be transmitted. The data processor is based on FPGA technology. It performs pulse compression and averaging in real-time.

The 4 MHz bandwidth received signals are sampled at 20 MHz, then digitally downconverted to complex samples, resulting in I and Q samples at 5 MHz rate. The data processor also includes pulse-pair Doppler processing. The output of the processor is the lag-0 (power) and lag-1 (complex Doppler data) for the co- and crosspolarized channels at each frequency. A VME-based workstation runs the radar, including ingesting and saving the processed data. Following calibration on the ground, the PR-2 data are stored in an HDF format.

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Applanix POS System

POS AV is a hardware and software system specifically designed for direct georeferencing of airborne sensor data. By integrating precision GNSS with inertial technology, POS AV enables geospatial projects to be completed more efficiently, effectively, and economically. POS AV is engineered for aerial cameras, scanning lasers, imaging sensors, synthetic aperture radar, and LIDAR technology.

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Nevzorov Liquid Water Content (LWC) and Total Water Content (TWC) Probe

The Nevzorov liquid water content (LWC) and total water content (TWC) probe is a constant-temperature, hot-wire probe designed for aircraft measurements of the ice and liquid water content of clouds. The probe consists of two separate sensors for measurements of cloud liquid and total (ice plus liquid) water content. Each sensor consists of a collector and a reference winding. The reference sensors are shielded from impact with cloud particles, specifically to provide an automatic compensation for convective heat losses.

The sensitivity of the probe is estimated to be approximately 0.003– 0.005 g m23. The accuracy of LWC measurements in nonprecipitating liquid clouds is estimated as 10%–15%. Tests at the NRC high-speed icing tunnel have provided verification of the TWC measurement for small frozen droplets to an accuracy of approximately 10%–20%, but verification in snow and natural ice crystals has not yet been possible due to the absence of any accurate standards. The TWC measurement offers not only the possibility of direct measurements of ice content but also improved liquid water contents in drizzle situations. Airborne measurements have provided data on the baseline drift and sensitivity of the probe and have provided comparisons to other conventional instruments. Several cases have been documented that exhibit the unique capabilities of the instrument to separate the ice and liquid components of supercooled clouds.

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Radiometric Measurement System

Optics: We employed very simple optical arrangement for the radiometer. The diffuser-light trap arrangement provides a hemispherical field of view with incident radiation being collimated by the high reflectance walls of the exponential-logarithmic cavity. Enough collimation of the radiation is achieved with this design that narrow spectral bandpass interference filters can be used to select desired wavelength regions.

Electronics: The instrument electronics includes five major functional blocks. They are the detectors signal conditioning block, the data processing block, the system controller block, the shadow ring drive and control block, and the data storage block.

The signal detectors are silicon photodiodes operating in the photovoltaic mode and covering the spectral range from about 0.3 to 1.1µm. Their signals are converted into electrical voltages by low noise FET input operational amplifiers. Programmable gain amplifiers allow adjustments for dynamic range, and filter circuits condition the signals for analog to digital processing. Data processing units consist of an analog multiplexer circuit, a sample-and-hold circuit, and an analog to digital converter providing a 12-bit resolution output. The shadow ring is driven by a DC motor rotating at a constant speed. A motor controller is used to maintain motor speed. The system controller provides the timing necessary to perform all the system's tasks. It sets the shadow ring in motion and steps through the detector's outputs, maintaining the proper dynamic range for the analog to digital converter by selecting the proper amplifier gain. It also controls the analog to digital conversion and selectively stores data.

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Microwave Temperature Profiler

The Microwave Temperature Profiler (MTP) is a passive microwave radiometer, which measures the natural thermal emission from oxygen molecules in the earth’s atmosphere for a selection of elevation angles between zenith and nadir. The current observing frequencies are 55.51, 56.65 and 58.80 GHz. The measured "brightness temperatures" versus elevation angle are converted to air temperature versus altitude using a quasi-Bayesian statistical retrieval procedure. The MTP has no ITAR restrictions, has export compliance classification number EAR99/NLR. An MTP generally consists of two assemblies: a sensor unit (SU), which receives and detects the signal, and a data unit (DU), which controls the SU and records the data. In addition, on some platforms there may be a third element, a real-time analysis computer (RAC), which analyzes the data to produce temperature profiles and other data products in real time. The SU is connected to the DU with power, control, and data cables. In addition the DU has interfaces to the aircraft navigation data bus and the RAC, if one is present. Navigation data is needed so that information such as altitude, pitch and roll are available. Aircraft altitude is needed to perform retrievals (which are altitude dependent), while pitch and roll are needed for controlling the position of a stepper motor which must drive a scanning mirror to predetermined elevation angles. Generally, the feed horn is nearly normal to the flight direction and the scanning mirror is oriented at 45-degrees with respect to receiving feed horn to allow viewing from near nadir to near zenith. At each viewing position a local oscillator (LO) is sequenced through two or more frequencies. Since a double sideband receiver is used, the LO is generally located near the "valley" between two spectral lines, so that the upper and lower sidebands are located near the spectral line peaks to ensure the maximum absorption. This is especially important at high altitudes where "transparency" corrections become important if the lines are too "thin." Because each frequency has a different effective viewing distance, the MTP is able to "see" to different distances by changing frequency. In addition, because the viewing direction is also varied and because the atmospheric opacity is temperature and pressure dependent, different effective viewing distances are also achieved through scanning in elevation . If the scanning is done so that the applicable altitudes (that is, the effective viewing distance times the sine of the elevation angle) at different frequencies and elevation angles are the same, then inter-frequency calibration can also be done, which improves the quality of the retrieved profiles. For a two-frequency radiometer with 10 elevation angles, each 15-second observing cycle produces a set of 20 brightness temperatures, which are converted by a linear retrieval algorithm to a profile of air temperature versus altitude, T(z). Finally, radiometric calibration is performed using the outside air temperature (OAT) and a heated reference target to determine the instrument gain. However, complete calibration of the system to include "window corrections" and other effects, requires tedious analysis and comparison with radiosondes near the aircraft flight path. This is probably the most important single factor contributing to reliable calibration. For stable MTPs, like that on the DC8, such calibrations appear to be reliable for many years. Such analysis is always performed before MTP data are placed on mission archive computers.

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DC-8 - AFRC, ER-2 - AFRC, Global Hawk - AFRC, L-188C, M-55, Gulfstream V - NSF, WB-57 - JSC
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