Measurements of Atmospheric Reactive Gases

In-Situ Photochemical Tracer Measurements

The in-situ observations group is responsible for a number of aircraft trace gas instruments, including instruments that can be requested via the NSA/LAOF process, or collaboratively deployed on other platforms.

• Picarro cavity ring-down absorption instrument for CH₄, CO₂, and H₂O (certified for GV and C130). LAOF community Requestable.
• Aerodyne Research TILDAS instrument for ambient measurement of CO, N₂O, and H₂O (certified for GV and C130). LAOF community Requestable.
• Chemiluminescence instruments (2) for high precision and/or fast-time response ambient measurements of Ozone. LAOF community Requestable.
• Compact 2-channel chemiluminescence instrument with photolytic conversion / gold catalytic conversion for the ambient measurement of NO and either NO₂ or NO_y (home built, certified for GV and C130). LAOF community Requestable.
• 4-channel chemiluminescence instrument / photolytic conversion / gold catalytic conversion for the ambient measurement of NO, NO₂, NO_y, O₃ (home built for various aircraft, not certified for GV). LAOF community Requestable.
• Thermal Dissociation Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer
• Modified Aerolaser vacuum-UV flourescence instruments (2) for the ambient measurement of CO (no longer LAOF community requestable but still available upon special request)
• PAN-CIMS, built in collaboration with Georgia Tech). Available to the community by special request.
• Single-channel chemiluminescense instrument suitable for laboratory or other ground-based measurements of NO and NO₂ (alternating)

Summary of Development Projects:

• APROC (ACOM Project for the Revitalization of Observational Capabilities, Aircraft WingPod CIMS instrument Development)
• Modernization of our NOx measurement suite (Development of an LIF based NOx measurement)
• ChemPod (Aircraft WingPod Tracer Package)

For more information, see Reactive Gases Instruments.