Monitoring of Stratospheric Trace Gases in the Arctic with a New Mobile FTIR Spectrometer

Interest in atmospheric chemistry has risen dramatically in the last few years. Topics such as the ozone hole, greenhouse effect with global warming, and climatic change have all become household words. High-resolution FTIR clearly suggests itself as a method of choice for research in this field: The high resolution allows individual rotational-vibrational lines of atmospheric gases to be probed and trace gas concentrations thereby be quantified. Unambiguous quantitative identification of individual species is critical in order to characterize and model the changes in the atmosphere. Also, due to the reduced effect of intermolecular line broadening at lower pressures, the absorption linewidths become narrower at higher altitudes. With sufficient spectral resolution, the composite line profiles can thus be deconvoluted to yield vertical profiles of individual gases.