The MERLIN Lidar Instrument for Atmospheric CH4: Quality and Performance Monitoring

Abstract

After water vapor and carbon dioxide, methane is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the Earth atmosphere. The new generation space borne Lidar mission MERLIN (Methane Remote Sensing Lidar Mission) will make very sensitive measurements of the Methane distribution with unprecedented quality, i.e. 50km averaged methane columns with an accuracy of ~ 1%. After its launch in 2020, MERLIN will track down sources and sinks of CH4 on a global scale. We will present our approach and strategy to perform one of the key ground segment work components that support MERLIN scientific activities which is the long-term monitoring of the instrument and its measurements. This function includes tracking the behavior of the instrument and its subsystems overtime as well as verification and validation of the scientific data during the entire lifetime of the mission. It mainly monitors the instrument’s performance in response to expected or unexpected natural events or technical situations. These are achieved by analyzing the measurement data and housekeeping information over different time frames. We will additionally show how our expertise on SCIAMACHY can be applied to MERLIN.