Airborne tunable diode laser measurements of formaldehyde

Accurate measurements of formaldehyde (CH2O) in the atmosphere are essential to further our understanding of various atmospheric cycles involving hydrogen and carbon-containing species. Comparisons among independent measurements of this gas and between measurements and model calculations have raised numerous questions regarding the veracity of both endeavors. The present paper describes a long-term effort by our group to develop and employ tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) for highly accurate measurements of this gas on both ground-based and aircraft platforms. A highly sensitive and selective TDLAS system, which has successfully flown on three different aircraft campaigns, will be described. Many new hardware and software features, which have been implemented, now make it possible to detect ambient CH2O concentrations as low as 55 parts-per-trillion employing a 20-s integration time. This paper will also discuss the many aspects associated with high accuracy and its verification, including a brief discussion of our aircraft sampling system and inlet surface effects. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.