REMOTE MEASUREMENTS OF TRACE GASES WITH THE JPL LASER ABSORPTION SPECTROMETER.

Abstract

Results are presented of efforts to develop an instrument which is capable of remotely measuring gases in the troposphere. The Laser Absorption Spectrometer (LAS) is a remote sensing instrument, designed and built for use in aircraft, and has been used since 1977 to measure tropospheric ozone distributions. A series of correlative ozone measurements, involving the LAS in one aircraft and an in-situ ozone measuring instrument in another aircraft, have been conducted over the past three years. The airborne in-situ data, along with ozone data from ground-based monitoring instruments, were used to assess the accuracy of the ozone column abundance data collected by the LAS.