Introduction of Atmosphere and Climate Explorers LABoratory (ACELAB) mission concept
Presenter:
Congliang Liu (1,3)
(1) National Space Science Center (NSSC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; (3) JOAC–Joint Laboratory on Occultations for Atmosphere and Climate by NSSC and University of Graz
(1) National Space Science Center (NSSC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; (2) Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change (WEGC), University of Graz, Graz, Austria; (3) JOAC–Joint Laboratory on Occultations for Atmosphere and Climate by NSSC and University of Graz
Talk
GNSS radio occultation (GNSS RO) has become a major method to observe the Earth's atmospheric thermodynamic state variables, i.e., pressure, temperature, and humidity. However, in GNSS RO, the temperature and humidity profiles in the troposphere can be retrieved separately from refractivity only by co-using a priori humidity or temperature information. Fortunately, as an advanced technique microwave occultation using centimeter and millimeter wave signals between low Earth orbit satellites (LEO-LEO microwave occultation, LMO) can exploit both the refraction and absorption of the signals to solve the temperature-humidity ambiguity in the troposphere. Thus LMO enables to retrieve pressure, temperature, and humidity profiles without auxiliary background information. Liquid water and rain rate profiles as well as turbulence and complementary 3D cloud information may be co-observed. Additionally, the concept of LEO-LEO infrared-laser occultation (LIO), using laser cross-link signals in the short-wave infrared band 2-2.5 µm, has been designed to accurately observe key trace gas species for chemistry and climate (i.e., H2O, CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, CO, including key isotopes), line-of-sight wind speed, and also profiles of cloud layers and aerosols as by-products. Recently, in China, the Atmosphere and Climate Explorers LABoratory (ACELAB) mission concept has been proposed to the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS, which mainly involves the LMO and LIO techniques. In this presentation, the concept, scientific targets, exploration principles and progress of ACELAB mission will be presented.
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