Climate change models used to predict the Earth's atmospheric conditions in the future require data about the different gases and other elements in the Earth's atmosphere. In this regard, we now have an instrument that might be able to accurately collect atmospheric data in order to improve our climate change models.
In the Optical Society journal Applied Optics, researchers from Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR) — Germany’s national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research — describe how their lidar instrument was used aboard an aircraft to acquire the first simultaneous measurements of the vertical structure of water vapor and ozone in the tropopause region of the atmosphere. The researchers say that the new system might even be useful for monitoring atmospheric gases from space.
(Image credit: DLR/OSA)