in situ observations

We have developed a tunable diode laser (TDL) based instrument for aircraft based in situ measurements CO and N2O. The instrument can operate in a fully automatic mode, including self-calibration, for up to 8 hours in a package designed to occupy one half the space of a WB-57 bomb-bay pallet. The performance goals of the diode laser are to measure CO and N2O concentrations of 1 ppbv in a measurement time of 1 second.

The TDL instrument has been flown on the NSF and NASA airborne missions ACCENT 1999 , and (TOPSE 2000)