MUSICA

MUlti-platform remote Sensing of Isotopologues for investigating the Cycle of Atmospheric water

Atmospheric water is an enormously crucial trace gas. It is responsible for ~70 % of the natural greenhouse effect (Schmidt et al., JGR, 2010) and carries huge amounts of latent heat. The isotopic composition of water vapor is an elegant tracer for a better understanding and quantification of the extremely complex and variable hydrological cycle in Earth’s atmosphere (evaporation, cloud condensation, rainout, re-evaporation, snow), which in turn is a prerequisite to improve climate modeling and predictions. Within the last years progress was made in measuring HDO and H216O concentrations by infrared remote sensing instruments, which provide the opportunity to gather long-term (ground-based in the framework of NDACC)  and area-wide (satellite based sensor IASI) observations.

MUSICA (MUlti-platform remote Sensing of Isotopologues for investigating the Cycle of Atmospheric water) aims to generate a tropospheric dataset of HDO/H216O based on remote sensing measurements from satellite/ground and to validate the remote sensing measurements by in situ-components.