Airborne Lidar Measurements of Carbon Dioxide Regional and Point Sources

The JPL airborne Laser Absorption Spectrometer has been flown on the NASA DC-8 research aircraft on four flight campaigns during the past five years, along with two other CO2 lidar instruments, in support of NASA's ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons) Earth-orbiting Mission formulation studies. The JPL CO2LAS measures the weighted column abundance of carbon dioxide between the aircraft and the surface, The instrument operates at a 2.05 micron wavelength optimized for enhanced sensitivity to boundary layer CO2. It has been flown on a Twin Otter aircraft as well as the NASA DC-8.

We present some interesting examples of point-source and regional source plume observations that enable the calculation of emissions and fluxes.