Airborne measurements of atmospheric methane column abundance using a pulsed integrated-path differential absorption lidar.

We report airborne measurements of the column abundance of atmospheric methane made over an altitude range of 3-11 km using a direct detection integrated-path differential-absorption lidar with a pulsed laser emitting at 1651 nm. The laser transmitter was a tunable, seeded optical parametric amplifier pumped by a Nd:YAG laser, and the receiver used a photomultiplier detector and photon-counting electronics. The results follow the expected changes with aircraft altitude, and the measured line shapes and optical depths show good agreement with theoretical calculations.