Portable spectrometers for greenhouse gas measurements were tested at Sodankylä

During the recent years new portable spectrometers have been developed to record the spectrum of near-infrared radiation of direct sunlight and to derive column averaged dry-air mole fractions of atmospheric trace gases such as CO2, CH4 and CO. The ground-based measurements are expected to support calibration and validation of relevant satellite products. An European Space Agency (ESA) funded measurement campaign FRM4GHG took place in Sodankylä at the Arctic Space Center of the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Kuva: Kari Mäenpää

The campaign was related to the ESA’s Sentinel-5P mission, launched in late 2017. TROPOMI instrument on board Sentinel-5P provides measurements with unprecedented temporal and spatial coverage, including CH4 and CO observations.

Sodankylä site of the Finnish Meteorological Institute has relevant infrastructure for both remote sensing and in-situ observations, including the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) facility and a balloon borne sounding facility. Sodankylä was the first site in Europe to establish accurate profile measurements of CO2, CH4 and CO using a novel AirCore method.

Within the ESA funded campaign several portable spectrometers were run in the vicinity of the TCCON instrument under various atmospheric conditions. The results provide a comparative characterization of the participating instruments with respect to the TCCON instrument. The outcome of the campaign will be used for further development of observation sites and to improve support for the validation of the existing and future satellite missions.

More information:

Senior Scientist, Dr. Rigel Kivi, Finnish Meteorological Institute, tel. 0295392728, rigel.kivi(at)fmi.fi

Research articles: Sha, M. K., De Mazière, M., Notholt, J., Blumenstock, T., Chen, H., Dehn, A., Griffith, D. W. T., Hase, F., Heikkinen, P., Hermans, C., Hoffmann, A., Huebner, M., Jones, N., Kivi, R., Langerock, B., Petri, C., Scolas, F., Tu, Q., and Weidmann, D.: Intercomparison of low- and high-resolution infrared spectrometers for ground-based solar remote sensing measurements of total column concentrations of CO2, CH4, and CO, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 4791–4839, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-4791-2020, 2020.

Tu, Q., Hase, F., Blumenstock, T., Kivi, R., Heikkinen, P., Sha, M. K., Raffalski, U., Landgraf, J., Lorente, A., Borsdorff, T., Chen, H., Dietrich, F., and Chen, J.: Intercomparison of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 abundances on regional scales in boreal areas using Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) analysis, COllaborative Carbon Column Observing Network (COCCON) spectrometers, and Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite observations, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 4751–4771, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-4751-2020, 2020.

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