Spaceborne Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar (ACDL) Status and Progress

Spaceborne lidar is an important instrument to measure the global atmospheric CO₂ column concentrations and aerosol profiles with high accuracy. Atmospheric environment monitoring satellite (AEMS, also named as DQ-1) Aerosol and Carbon dioxide Detection Lidar (ACDL) is a novel spaceborne lidar, which integrates two lidar systems in a set of lidar setup, using a 1572 nm integrated path laser differential absorption (IPDA) method to measure the global CO₂ column concentrations, and using a 532 nm high spectrum resolution lidar (HSRL) method to measure the vertical profiles of aerosol and cloud, which was firstly successfully validated. AEMS was launched on April 16th, 2022 and ACDL has worked more than one year continuously. The global carbon dioxide column concentrations (XCO₂) from 82° N to 82° S over land and sea on daytime and nighttime are presented. The ACDL XCO₂ measurements are compared with TCCON sites XCO₂ data. For the first time, the global XCO₂ with accuracy of better than 1 ppm and aerosol profiles with accuracy of better than 20% are obtained with spaceborne active sensor.