BackForwardInstrument:  MOPITT 

Instrument details
Acronym MOPITT
Full name Measurement Of Pollution In The Troposphere
Purpose Atmospheric chemistry.  Tracked species: CO (profile) and CH4 (total column)
Short description

Gas correlation spectrometer; 3 bands, 8 channels. For CO: 4.62 µm (four channels) and 2.33 µm (two channels); for CH4:  2.26 µm (two channels)

More information here
Background

New development
Scanning Technique

Cross-track, 29 steps for a total swath of 640 km
Resolution 22 km IFOV
Coverage / Cycle Global coverage in 5 days, in daylight
Mass 182 kg Power 243 W Data Rate 25 kbps

 

Providing Agency NASA
Instrument Maturity Flown on an R&D satellite
Utilization Period: 2000 to 2026
Last update: 2024-09-30
Detailed characteristics
Satellites this instrument is flying on

Note: a red tag indicates satellites no longer operational, a green tag indicates operational satellites, a blue tag indicates future satellites

Instrument classification
  • Earth observation instrument
  • Passive optical radiometer or spectrometer
  • Cross-nadir infrared sounder, possibly including VIS channels
WIGOS Subcomponents
  • Subcomponent 1
  • IR hyperspectral sounders [in SSO]
  • IR hyperspectral sounder [in SSO]
Mission objectives
Primary mission objectives
  • CH4 mole fraction
  • CO
Evaluation of Measurements

The following list indicates which measurements can typically be retrieved from this category of instrument. To see a full Gap Analysis by Variable, click on the respective variable.

Note: table can be sorted by clicking on the column headers
Note: * Primary mission objective.
VariableRelevance for measuring this variableOperational limitationsExplanation
CH4 mole fraction*1 - primaryCloud sensitive.SWIR and MWIR very-high-resolution spectrometry. CH4 lines around 1.6, 2.3, 3.4 and 4.3 micrometers
CO*1 - primaryCloud sensitive.Very-high resolution spectrometry. CO lines around 2.3 and 4.6 micrometers. Specifically designed for CO