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Evaluation of the IAGOS-Core GHG package H2O measurements during the DENCHAR airborne inter-comparison campaign in 2011

Literature Reference
Peer Reviewed Literature
Authors

Annette Filges, Christoph Gerbig, Chris W. Rella, John Hoffnagle, Herman Smit, Martina Krämer, Nicole Spelten, Christian Rolf, Zoltán Bozóki, Bernhard Buchholz, and Volker Ebert

Date
August 21st, 2018
Abstract

As part of the DENCHAR (Development and Evaluation of Novel Compact Hygrometer for Airborne Research) inter-comparison campaign in northern Germany in 2011, a commercial cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) based gas analyzer (G2401-m, Picarro Inc., US) was installed on a Learjet to measure atmospheric water vapor, CO2, CH4, and CO. The CRDS components were identical to those chosen for integration aboard commercial airliners within the IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) project. Since the quantitative capabilities of the CRDS water vapor measurements were never evaluated and reviewed in detail in a publication before, the campaign allowed for an initial assessment of the long-term IAGOS water vapor measurements by CRDS against reference instruments with a long performance record (Fast In-situ Stratospheric Hygrometer (FISH) and CR-2 frost point hygrometer (Buck Research Instruments L.L.C., US), both operated by Research Centre Jülich). For the initial water calibration of the instrument it was compared against a dew point mirror (Dewmet TDH, Michell Instruments Ltd., UK) in the range from 70 000 to 25 000 ppm water vapor mole fraction. During the intercomparison campaign the analyzer was compared on the ground over the range from 2 to 600 ppm against the dew point hygrometer used for calibration of the FISH reference instrument.

A new, independent calibration method based on the dilution effect of water vapor on CO2 was evaluated. Comparison of the in-flight data against the reference instruments showed that the analyzer is reliable and has a good long-term stability. The flight data suggest a conservative precision estimate for measurements made at 0.4 Hz (2.5 s measurement interval) of 4 ppm for H2O< 10 ppm, 20% or 10 ppm (whichever is smaller) for 10 ppm <H2O< 100 ppm, and 5% or 30 ppm (whichever is smaller) for H2O> 100 ppm. Accuracy of the CRDS instrument was estimated, based on laboratory calibrations, as 1% for the water vapor range from 25 000 ppm down to
7000 ppm, increasing to 5% at 50 ppm water vapor. Accuracy at water vapor mole fractions below 50 ppm was difficult to assess, as the reference systems suffered from lack of data availability.