Water vapor Infrared Sunlight Sounder with PICs (WISSP)

We propose to develop a Water vapor Infrared Sunlight Sounder with PICs (WISSP) for measurement of 3D water vapor profiles in the Earth's atmosphere. WISSP will measure individual water vapor absorption lines in the near-infrared solar part of the spectrum; rather than multi-line “bands” in the mid- or far-infrared measured by current optical sounders; and at multiple viewing zenith angles and multiple polarization angles to better constrain the vertical reconstruction of water vapor profiles. WISSP will benefit from machine-learning techniques by ingesting lidar data to further improve reconstructions; enabling high transverse and vertical resolution with low uncertainty in a small; low-cost platform.

The proposed instrument would achieve water vapor vertical retrievals with increased vertical resolution; reduced measurement uncertainty; and reduced confounding effects (from temperature/pressure) in a reduced instrument size. In the long term; we envision a small constellation of CubeSats equipped with WISSP in conjunction with a water vapor DIAL lidar (airborne or satellite) for real-time calibration to provide 3D maps of water vapor concentration with daily or better revisits for significant improvements to weather forecasting and climate science.

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