HR: 1340h
AN: A23B-1254    [Abstracts]
TI: Column Water Vapor Retrieval Method and Observations Associated With the SAM Sensor
AU: * Williams, J B
EM: jwill@cc.usu.edu
AF: Utah State University, 4140 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-4140, United States
AU: Baker, D J
EM: spacegrant@cc.usu.edu
AF: Utah State University, 4140 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-4140, United States
AU: Stair, A
EM: ats@visidyne.com
AF: Visidyne, Inc., 10 Corporate Place So. Bedfort Street, Burlington, MA 01803, United States
AU: DeVore, J
EM: devore@visidyne.com
AF: Visidyne, Inc., 10 Corporate Place So. Bedfort Street, Burlington, MA 01803, United States
AB: SAM (Sun and Aureole Measurement) is a sun tracking imaging sensor designed and produced by Visidyne Inc. in Burlington, Massachusetts. SAM has applications in many areas such as climate change monitoring, cloud physics research, and complementing NASA's AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork). Recently a spectrometer was added to SAM to measure the column water vapor amount as a function of time and location. These measurements are obtained by the use of a silicon-detector based spectrometer. The ratio of two wavelength bands is used to retrieve the column water vapor amount, one band representing the water vapor absorption band and the other a nearby guard band. The formula for calculating this quantity was derived from the relationships representing the irradiance measured at these two wavelengths. The water absorption is approximated by a least squares fit to MODTRAN (MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission) calculations. The results of this study are presented for several locations. One of which was co-located with AERONET at the SGP (Southern Great Plains) ARM central facility during the CLASIC/CHAPS campaign for a calibration standard. A three constant approach was found best to determine the column water vapor.
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801, 4906)
DE: 0319 Cloud optics
DE: 0320 Cloud physics and chemistry
DE: 0394 Instruments and techniques
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting