Feasibility study on 1.6μm continuous-wave modulation laser absorption spectrometer system for measurement of global CO2 concentration from a satellite

A feasibility study is carried out on a 1.6 mu m continuous-wave modulation laser absorption spectrometer system for measurement of global CO2 concentration from a satellite. The studies are performed for wavelength selection and both systematic and random error analyses. The systematic error in the differential absorption optical depth (DAOD) is mainly caused by the temperature estimation error, surface pressure estimation error, altitude estimation error, and ON wavelength instability. The systematic errors caused by unwanted backscattering from background aerosols and dust aerosols can be reduced to less than 0.26% by using a modulation frequency of around 200 kHz, when backscatter coefficients of these unwanted backscattering have a simple profile on altitude. The influence of backscattering from cirrus clouds is much larger than that of dust aerosols. The transmission power required to reduce the random error in the DAOD to 0.26% is determined by the signal-to-noise ratio and the carrier-to-noise ratio calculations. For a satellite altitude of 400km and receiving aperture diameter of 1m, the required transmission power is approximately 18 W and 70 W when albedo is 0.31 and 0.08, respectively; the total measurement time in this case is 4s, which corresponds to a horizontal resolution of 28km. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America