Development of a high-resolution oxygen A-band spectrometer (HABS)
Authors
Jerry Berndt — University at Albany
Qilong Min — State University of New York, Albany
Peter W. Kiedron — National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Bangsheng Yin — State University of New York, Albany
Description
A high-resolution oxygen A-band spectrometer (HABS) has been developed to study the applicability of photon path length statistics in the remote sensing of clouds and aerosols. The HABS has the capability to measure both zenith and direct-beam radiances with a field of view of 2.7 degrees. The direct-beam measurements can be used to calibrate the spectrometer and construct the retrieval kernels for the zenith measurements. The HABS also measures polarizations of A-band spectra with four polarizers, which substantially enhances the retrieval ability for aerosols and ice clouds. This spectrometer successfully achieves an out-of-band rejection of better than 10^-5, a resolution of better than 0.5 cm^-5, and a high signal-to-noise ratio, which are crucial to retrievals of atmospheric information through high-resolution spectrometry in the oxygen A-band. This spectrometer will provide a basis for the applications of path length distribution in the development and validation of remote sensing and radiative transfer parameterizations that account for the cloud 3D effects.
