MERLIN: A French-German Space Lidar Mission Dedicated to Atmospheric Methane

Gerhard Ehret (1) , Philippe Bousquet (2, 3) , Clémence Pierangelo (4) , Matthias Alpers (5) , Bruno Millet (4) , James Abshire (6) , Heinrich Bovensmann (7) , John Burrows (7) , Frédéric Chevallier (2, 3) , Philippe Ciais (2, 8) , Cyril Crevoisier (9) , Andreas Fix (1) , Pierre Henri Flamant (9, 10) , Christian Frankenberg (11) , Fabien Gibert (9) , Birgit Heim (12) , Martin Heimann (13, 14) , Sander Houweling (15, 16, 17) , Hans Hubberten (12) , Patrick Jöckel (1) , Kathy S. Law (10) , Alexander Löw (18) , Julia Marshall (19) , Anna Agusti-Panareda (20) , Sébastien Payan (10) , Catherine Prigent (21) , Patrick Rairoux (22) , Torsten Sachs (23) , Marko Scholze (24) , Martin Wirth (1)

1 IPA - DLR Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre
2 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
3 SATINV - Modélisation INVerse pour les mesures atmosphériques et SATellitaires
4 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]
5 DLR - Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt
6 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
7 IUP - Institut für Umweltphysik [Bremen]
8 ICOS-ATC - ICOS-ATC
9 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
10 TROPO - LATMOS
11 Tropospheric sounding, assimilation, and modeling group [JPL]
12 AWI - Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
13 MPI-BGC - Max-Planck-Institut für Biogeochemie
14 Department of Physics [Helsinki]
15 SRON - SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
16 VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [Amsterdam]
17 Department of Earth Sciences [Amsterdam]
18 Department of Geography [München]
19 MPIB - Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie = Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
20 ECMWF - European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
21 LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etude du Rayonnement et de la Matière en Astrophysique
22 ILM - Institut Lumière Matière [Villeurbanne]
23 GFZ - GeoForschungsZentrum - Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam
24 Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science [Lund]

The MEthane Remote sensing Lidar missioN (MERLIN) aims at demonstrating the spaceborne active measurement of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, based on an Integrated Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) nadir-viewing LIght Detecting and Ranging (Lidar) instrument. MERLIN is a joint French and German space mission, with a launch currently scheduled for the timeframe 2021/22. The German Space Agency (DLR) is responsible for the payload, while the platform (MYRIADE Evolutions product line) is developed by the French Space Agency (CNES). The main scientific objective of MERLIN is the delivery of weighted atmospheric columns of methane dry-air mole fractions for all latitudes throughout the year with systematic errors small enough (<3.7 ppb) to significantly improve our knowledge of methane sources from global to regional scales, with emphasis on poorly accessible regions in the tropics and at high latitudes. This paper presents the MERLIN objectives, describes the methodology and the main characteristics of the payload and of the platform, and proposes a first assessment of the error budget and its translation into expected uncertainty reduction of methane surface emissions

Keywords: MERLIN; space mission; IPDA Lidar; atmospheric methane; CH4 emissions; global methane budget

Domains: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]

Gerhard Ehret, Philippe Bousquet, Clémence Pierangelo, Matthias Alpers, Bruno Millet, et al.. MERLIN: A French-German Space Lidar Mission Dedicated to Atmospheric Methane. Remote Sensing, 2017, 9 (10), pp.1052. ⟨10.3390/rs9101052⟩. ⟨insu-01664230⟩