Attenuated atmospheric backscatter profiles measured by the CO2 Sounder lidar in the 2017 ASCENDS/ABoVE airborne campaign
- 1NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
- 2University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA
- 1NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
- 2University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA
Abstract. A series of attenuated atmospheric backscatter profiles were measured at 1572 nm by the CO2 Sounder lidar during the eight flights of the 2017 ASCENDS/ABoVE (Active Sensing of CO2 Emission over Nights, Days, & Seasons mission, Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment) airborne campaign. In addition to measuring the column average CO2 mixing ratio from the signals reflected by the ground, the CO2 Sounder lidar also recorded the height-resolved attenuated atmospheric backscatter profiles beneath the aircraft. We have recently processed these vertical profiles with a 15-m vertical spacing and 1-s integration time along the flight path (~200 m) for all the 2017 flights and have posted the results at NASA Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for Biogeochemical Dynamics (Sun et al., 2022), https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2051. This paper describes the principle of these lidar backscatter profile measurements, their data processing, and estimated signal to noise ratio.
Xiaoli Sun et al.
Status: open (until 17 Jun 2022)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2022-59', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Apr 2022
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General Comments:
This manuscript presents the data of profile measurements derived from the airborne-based CO2 Sounder lidar operating at 1572 nm. Complement to the XCO2 column measurement, this new data set provides the opportunity, to identify clouds, estimate the height of aerosol layers above the ground, and detect smoke plumes from wildfires using a space-based or airborne-based lidar. The method and dataset would benefit retrieval algorithms development for current and future space-based greenhouse gas lidar missions. The presented methods and data are presented clearly and the paper is generally well written and can be accepted after minor revisions.
Specific Comments:
- The flight path includes footprint over water, could you please give statement about the detectability of XCO2 and atmospheric profile over water?
- What does “the detector gain was changed by a factor of 2 in each step.” In line 254 stands for ? Please also briefly describe how the gain of the lidar detector was adjusted during the flight.
- CO2 absorption lines are difference in pressure and temperature, It is better to also illustrate how the offset locking frequency sample the variable CO2 absorption line in the atmosphere in Figure 2.
technical correctionsï¼
- Line 44: “…records the laser signal backscattered from the atmosphere and the surface.” should be “backscattered from the atmosphere and reflected by the surface”
- Line 58: Typo, CO2 should be subscript 2.
- Line 95-97: The sentence is too long to follow, and “append” should be “appends”, “close and save” should be “closes and saves”.
- Line 103: “nine groups” could be “9 groups”, in order to consist with above text (for example line 87).
- Line 210: add a comma after “The optical signal power collected by the lidar can be written as”.
- Lin 262: “equals” should be “equal”.
Xiaoli Sun et al.
Data sets
ABoVE/ASCENDS: Atmospheric Backscattering Coefficient Profiles, 2017 Sun, X., P. T. Kolbeck, J. B. Abshire, S. R. Kawa, and J. Mao https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2051
Xiaoli Sun et al.
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