Development of Novel Instrumentation to Characterize Aerosol Inlets and Cloud Particles

"Atmospheric aerosols have a significant effect on the earth'sradiation budget and global climate. Several studies have shownthat significant losses occur in inlets and tubing used tomeasure aerosol particle size distribution. In Phase II, anaerosol inlet calibration device will be fabricated and flighttested on the Navy Twin Otter research aircraft. The inletcalibration device will provide quantitative measurement oflosses in aerosol inlets.The larger portion of the size range of atmospheric aerosols ispoorly measured. In Phase II, SPEC will also design and build anew optical imaging probe that will measure the size, shape andconcentration of large aerosols and small cloud particles whileflying on an aircraft at 100 m/s. The new instrument, called a2D-S (stereo) probe, will produce stereo images of particles fromabout 5 microns to 1 mm in diameter using dual lasers and custom128-photodiode arrays. The 2D-S probe will be fully developedinto a commercial product at the completion of Phase II and willretrofit into a standard canister installed on all researchaircraft.If Options I and II are funded, SPEC will incorporate the 2D-Selectro-optics into the SPEC cloud particle imager (CPI), a probewhich provides very high definition (2.3 micron) images ofparticles.BENEFITS: The immediate post applications of development of the 2D-S and 2D-S/CPI probes inPhase II will be application on research aircraft in the atmospheric sciencecommunit