Source: NASA's new CO2 sounder nearly ready for prime time "During the CO2 Sounder's 2016 (aircraft) campaign, we realized the detector's high sensitivity," said Anand Ramanathan, an instrument-development team member. "It took 10 seconds to accumulate enough light to make a measurement in our 2013 campaign. In 2016, it took just one second. This is like improving the photographic film speed so that camera exposure can get shorter and one can get a higher frames-per-second rate. Besides the high sensitivity, the detector also demonstrated a highly linear dynamic range, which was of great help flying over snow, which is surprisingly dark in the infrared," he added. Equally important, Abshire said, is the instrument's laser system, a capability not enjoyed by current spaceborne carbon-monitoring missions. Unlike existing instruments, which rely on passive or reflected sunlight to gather measurements, the CO2 Sounder's laser system provides the light source, giving it the ability to measure carbon dioxide day and night, regardless of the season—an essential capability for ASCENDS. Bob Wilson
This looks like a nice gadget to me. With just a little snuffling about, a lot of technical details can be found without bumping into publishers' paywalls Their goal seems to be increased laser power (so that it can be orbited) without loss of spectral resolution. On the other end, one can already by a lovely Picarro (TM) that has so much spectral resolution that it sorts isotopes. But the power is so small you must physically sample the gas into a cell where the light bounces 1000s of times. I love me those gadgets.
