Abstract. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have made a great deal of effort to develop a coherent 2-μm differential absorption and wind lidar (Co2DiaWiL) for measuring CO2 and wind speed. First, coherent Integrated Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) lidar experiments were conducted using the Co2DiaWiL and a hard target (surface return) located about 7.12 km south of NICT on 11, 27, and 28 December 2010. The detection sensitivity of a 2-μm IPDA lidar was examined in detail using the CO2 concentration measured by the hard target. The precisions of CO2 measurement for the hard target and 900, 4500 and 27 000 shot pairs were 6.5, 2.8, and 1.2%, respectively. The results indicated that a coherent IPDA lidar with a laser operating at a high pulse repetition frequency of a few tens of KHz is necessary for measuring the CO2 concentration of the hard target with a precision of 1–2 ppm. Statistical comparisons indicated that, although a small amount of in situ data and the fact that they were not co-located with the hard target made comparison difficult, the CO2 volume mixing ratio measured with the Co2DiaWiL was about 5 ppm lower than that measured with the in situ sensor. The statistical results indicated that there were no differences between the hard target and atmospheric return measurements. A precision of 1.5% was achieved from the atmospheric return, which is lower than that obtained from the hard-target returns. Although long-range DIfferential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) CO2 measurement with the atmospheric return can result in highly precise measurement, the precision of the atmospheric return measurement was widely distributed comparing to that of the hard target return. Our results indicated that it is important to use a Q-switched laser to measure the range-gated differential absorption optical depth with the atmospheric return and that it is better to simultaneously conduct both hard target and atmospheric return measurements to enable highly accurate CO2 measurement.
Validation of double-pulse 1572 nm integrated path differential absorption lidar measurement of carbon dioxide
