ER-2 - AFRC

The Pushbroom Imager for Cloud and Aerosol Research and Development is a V/SWIR imaging spectrometer designed to support atmospheric research. It features an undistorted wide field of view, and 50 meter resolution pixels when flown on the ER-2 aircraft. It is intended to simulate existing satellite imager products (MODIS/VIIRS,) and to validate radiances and geophysical retrievals, with an emphasis on cloud and aerosol science. It will also be used to prototype future imager requirements and algorithms, and to contribute to multi-disciplinary NASA field studies. Instrument Type: Dual Offner Imaging spectrometer Measurements: V/SWIR imagery (205 bands, 400 – 2450nm, 50 deg. FOV)

Harvard’s DCOTSS Portable Optical Particle Spectrometer (DPOPS) is an in situ instrument capable of measuring particle number density as a function of size throughout the troposphere and lower stratosphere. The core instrument (POPS, Handix Scientific, Boulder, CO), re-packaged by Harvard, uses a 405 nm diode laser to count and size individual particles in the size range 140–3000 nm. 3D printing technology was used in the construction of the instrument to reduce cost, manufacturing complexity, and weight. The DPOPS is an optimized POPS system for DCOTSS flight campaign with autonomous operation in flight that requires minimal support between flights. Three major upgrades are: (1) increasing the sampling flow with external pumps to achieve better counting statistics in light of the low particle number density, (2) achieving isokinetic sampling (the velocity of air entering the inlet is equal to the velocity of the approaching gas stream) with a custom inlet to ensure fidelity of sampling with respect to size, and (3) optimizing the tubing system to reduce the loss of particles in the sampling tubes. DPOPS can fly on pressurized or unpressurized aircraft. 

The Purdue PALMS-NG 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.

Air-LUSI makes highly-accurate, SI-traceable measurements of lunar spectral irradiance.  These measurements can be used to validate or adjust current models of lunar spectral irradiance used for calibration Earth observing satellites.  Air-LUSI is initially being used to address the current 5-10% uncertainty in knowledge of exo-atmospheric spectral lunar irradiance. Improved lunar spectral irradiance model accuracy will help satellite instruments to use the Moon as an absolute calibration reference, greatly improving the versitility and speed of on-orbit satellite calibration.  Air-LUSI has two main subsystems:

• IRIS - IRradiance Instrument Subsystem is a non-imaging telescope with an integrating sphere feeding light via fiber optics to a spectrometer.
• ARTEMIS - Autonomous, Robotic TElescope Mount Instrument Subsystem keeps telescope fixed on the Moon to within less than 0.1°.  This system uses a tracking camera on the telescope and control computer.

We are targeting lunar phases withing 5° to 90° of the Full Moon.  Air-LUSI measurements lunar spectral irradiance with spectral resolution of 3.7 nm with 0.8 nm sampling from 300 nm to 1100 nm, with accuracy target of better than 1% (k=1).  Future system performance will include measurements out to 2500 nm with ≤ 10 nm resolution.  Demonstration flights with the Air-LUSI provided an unprecedented sub-percent level of accuracy <0.8% (k=1) relative uncertainty from 400 nm to 950 nm.  Future measurement accuracy is expected to be <0.5% (k=1).

SPEC has developed a Fast Cloud Droplet Probe (FCDP) with state-of-the-art electro-optics and electronics that utilizes forward scattering to determine cloud droplet distributions and concentrations in the range of 1.5 to 50 microns.  Though designed for cloud droplet measurements, the probe has also shown reliable measurements in ice clouds.  The new electronics include a temperature controlled fiber-coupled laser, FSSP-300 optics with pinhole limiting depth of field (Lance et al. 2010), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), 40 MHz analog-to-digital-converter (ADC) sampling, custom amplifiers, a very small and low power Linux based 400 MHz processor and a 16-Gigabyte flash drive that stores data at the probe.

The NASA GSFC Compact Airborne NO2 Experiment (CANOE) instrument measures nitrogen dioxide (NO2) on both pressurized and unpressurized (high-altitude) aircraft. Using non-resonant laser induced fluorescence (LIF), CANOE possesses the high sensitivity, fast time response, and dynamic range needed to observe NO2 throughout the troposphere and lower stratosphere.

The NASA Rapid OZone Experiment (ROZE) is an in situ instrument capable of measuring ozone (O3) throughout the troposphere and lower stratosphere on airborne platforms. The instrument uses cavity-enhanced absorption to measure the amount of ozone in a sampled volume flowing through an optical cell. The high-sensitivity of the cavity-enhanced detection scheme and the small sample volume enable high precision measurements in short integration times, making this instrument suitable for measuring O₃ fluxes (the exchange between the Earth's surface and atmosphere) with the eddy covariance technique. The instrument is designed for autonomous operation and requires minimal support (and no gases or dry ice) in the field. An inlet mounted in the free stream is needed to sample ambient air.