Sensitive Measurement of Water Vapor from Commercial Aviation Platforms

Commercial aviation offers a low cost platform from which to make extensive humidity measurements, provided the instrumentation can run autonomously and endure the rigorous flight schedules. Advances in state of the art diode laser gas sensing technology make possible compact, fully automated, self-calibrating instrumentation with the sensitivity needed to measure humidity levels throughout the troposphere. This Phase 1 SBIR will investigate the feasibility of integrating diode laser water measurement technology into a package for commercial air carriers. The study will provide: 1) a design specification for meeting packaging requirements; 2) anticipated performance of such an instrument; 3) a method for validating the data by comparison to other humidity measurements; and 4) an output data structure that facilitates the use of the humidity data sets by all members of the atmospheric research community.