ARGOS: a vanborne system for remote air pollution measurements

Laser remote sensing offers a great opportunity to measure immission and even emission of gaseous pollutants in the troposphere. Large areas can be 3-dimensionally mapped in a fairly short time, thus dynamic behaviors in terms of vertical or horizontal concentration distributions can be derived. ARGOS (advanced remote gaseous oxide sensor) is an industrial manufactured system based on a DAS-lidar (differential absorption and scattering) method combined with a SODAR (sound detecting and ranging) for wind profile measurements. ARGOS has been presented at an SPIE conference in 1990 with the main emphasis on requirement specifications and realization. Field measurements of tropospheric sulfur dioxide and ozone have been conducted successfully and are presented and discussed in this paper. ARGOS is a joint development of GKSS/Research Centre Geesthacht and DASA/MBB, Space Communication and Propulsion Systems Division in Ottobrunn, Germany.