An airborne spectrometer with three infrared lasers for trace gas measurements applied to convection case studies
Résumé
An infrared absorption spectrometer named SPIRIT (SPectromètre InfraRouge In situ Toute altitude) has been built for airborne simultaneous online measurements of trace gases. SPIRIT is based on two recent technological advances, leading to optimal performances and miniaturization: continuous wave quantum cascade lasers (CW-QCL) operating near room temperature coupled to a new, patented, multipass optical cell (Robert, Appl. Optics, 2007). An essential electronic development allows the sequential use of three QCLs with the same single cell. With judicious selected spectral micro-windows, this potentially leads to the measurements of at least four species at 0.7 Hz frequency. The first deployment of SPIRIT was made onboard the DLR Falcon-20 aircraft during the campaign associated to the EU SHIVA (Stratospheric Ozone: Halogen Impacts in a Varying Atmosphere) project in Nov.-Dec. 2011 over Malaysia. In the present paper, the flight of 19 Nov. is presented in detail as an example of the SPIRIT performances, with CO, CO2, CH4 and N2O as measured species. The aircraft crossed four times the anvil of a severe thunderstorm from 11.3 km to 12.8 km altitude corresponding to a large convective system near Borneo island (6.0 °N-115.5 °E). During the crossing, carbon monoxide mixing ratios increase by 5 to 10 ppbv from the ambient cloud free environment to the anvil cloud correlated with an increase of CH4 mixing ratio. Using these observations, the fraction of boundary layer air contained in fresh convective outflow has been calculated. Other convection cases were detected, allowing for other fractions to be calculated, with results ranging between 0.15 and 0.55 and showing the variability of the mixing taking place during convective transport.