Portable laser spectrometer for airborne and ground-based remote sensing of geological CO2 emissions.

A 24 kg, suitcase sized, CW laser remote sensing spectrometer (LARSS) with a ~2 km range has been developed. It has demonstrated its flexibility in measuring both atmospheric CO2 from an airborne platform and terrestrial emission of CO2 from a remote mud volcano, Bledug Kuwu, Indonesia, from a ground-based sight. This system scans the CO2 absorption line with 20 discrete wavelengths, as opposed to the typical two-wavelength online offline instrument. This multi-wavelength approach offers an effective quality control, bias control, and confidence estimate of measured CO2 concentrations via spectral fitting. The simplicity, ruggedness, and flexibility in the design allow for easy transportation and use on different platforms with a quick setup in some of the most challenging climatic conditions. While more refinement is needed, the results represent a stepping stone towards widespread use of active one-sided gas remote sensing in the earth sciences.

Pulsed airborne lidar measurements of atmospheric optical depth using the Oxygen A-band at 765 nm.

We report on an airborne demonstration of atmospheric oxygen optical depth measurements with an IPDA lidar using a fiber-based laser system and a photon counting detector. Accurate knowledge of atmospheric temperature and pressure is required for NASA's Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) space mission, and climate modeling studies. The lidar uses a doubled erbium-doped fiber amplifier and single photon-counting detector to measure oxygen absorption at 765 nm. Our results show good agreement between the experimentally derived differential optical depth measurements with the theoretical predictions for aircraft altitudes from 3 to 13 km.

Airborne measurements of CO2 column absorption and range using a pulsed direct-detection integrated path differential absorption lidar.

We report on airborne CO(2) column absorption measurements made in 2009 with a pulsed direct-detection lidar operating at 1572.33 nm and utilizing the integrated path differential absorption technique. We demonstrated these at different altitudes from an aircraft in July and August in flights over four locations in the central and eastern United States. The results show clear CO(2) line shape and absorption signals, which follow the expected changes with aircraft altitude from 3 to 13 km. The lidar measurement statistics were also calculated for each flight as a function of altitude. The optical depth varied nearly linearly with altitude, consistent with calculations based on atmospheric models. The scatter in the optical depth measurements varied with aircraft altitude as expected, and the median measurement precisions for the column varied from 0.9 to 1.2 ppm. The altitude range with the lowest scatter was 8-10 km, and the majority of measurements for the column within it had precisions between 0.2 and 0.9 ppm.

A novel regiospecific N to O-methyl transferase activity in the biotransformation of a thebaine derivative with Cunninghamella echinulata NRRL 1384.

A novel regiospecific N- to O-methyl transfer reaction has been characterised in the biotransformation of an N-CD3-thebaine derivative with the fungus Cunninghamella echinulata NRRL 1384.

Narrowband, tunable, frequency-doubled, erbium-doped fiber-amplifed transmitter.

We report on the development of a fiber-based laser transmitter designed for active remote sensing spectroscopy. The transmitter uses a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration with a distributed feedback diode-laser master oscillator and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The output from the MOPA is frequency-doubled with a periodically poled potassium titanium oxide phosphate crystal. With 35 W of single-frequency peak optical pump power, 8 W of frequency-doubled peak power was achieved. The utility of this single-frequency, wavelength tunable, power scalable laser was then demonstrated in a spectroscopic measurement of diatomic oxygen A band.