Action Plan for DDF implementation

1
Towards an Autonomous Airborne Sun/Sky Scanning
Spectrometer Beat Schmid  (SGG/BAER), Nicholas
Truong (SGG/BAER), Teck Meriam (SGG/BAER),
Philip Russell (SGG), and Jens Redemann
(SGG/BAER)
Now at KLA Tencor
Atmospheric aerosols (particles 10 nm to 10 mm)
play a crucial role in the Earths radiation
balance and may hold the key to combating global
warming. However, more knowledge is needed about
aerosol sources, distributions and properties.
This requires continuous observations from
satellites, networks of ground-based instruments,
and dedicated field experiments.
The existing Ames airborne tracking
sunphotometers (AATS) make sunlight transmission
measurements at 6 or 14 discrete wavelengths from
which we derive information on aerosols, water
vapor and ozone. The AATS measuements have been
used extensively to validate measurements from
satellite-, aircraft- and surface-based
instruments. NASA Ames has been the world leader
in airborne sunphometry since 1985.
Instrument Block Diagram
The AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) program is
a global, federated ground-based network of
Sun/Sky radiometers initiated by NASA.
In the project we build a ground-based prototype
to address key technical challenges we encounter
when designing the smaller, lighter, fully
autonomous, more capable instrument described
above. The challenges are a) Dynamic range of
the detection system, b) Suppression of unwanted
stray light when measuring sky radiance a few
degrees away from the Sun, c) In-flight
self-cleaning of the optical window.
Spectra from various light sources
NASA Ames Airborne Sunphotometer-Satellite
Group Major Aerosol Field Campaigns, 1996-2004
TARFOX, 1996 ICARTT, 2004
SOLVE II, 2003
ADAM, 2003 EVE, 2004
ACE-Asia, 2001
CLAMS, 2001
ACE-2, 1997
ARM Aerosol IOP, 2003
PRIDE, 2000
SAFARI, 2000