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.