Our employee Rob Simmons interviewed about his role in creating images of the Earth from remote sensing data. In this video, Rob explains how there must be artistry in creating the world, and how the scientific study of our planet is able to create "one of the most mind expanding images in the human history".

The development of this technology, led by Sigma Space Chief Scientist Dr. John Degnan, has been sponsored over the past decade by NASA and the USAF, and has already shown its potential value in the measurements of ice sheet thickness and biomass in support of global climate change studies.

Read more on LaserFocusWorld.

They have major effects on Earth’s climate and weather. In fact, if there were no aerosols, there would be no clouds, since cloud droplets need these tiny "seeds" to help them form. In this way, aerosols influence the amount and location of rainfall and water. They also warm or cool the air by scattering and absorbing sunlight. Their presence affects the amount photosynthetic light and agricultural production. And when air pollution gets thick, these same particles reduce the quality of the air we breathe and the health of all living organisms.

In light of these important impacts on climate, weather, and air quality, scientists and policy-makers recognize the need to measure and monitor the distribution and evolution of aerosols. While there are a number of key aerosol properties to monitor, a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) stated, “In view of these objectives the present observations of the vertical distribution of aerosols are far from adequate.” One motivation for more and better aerosol profiles is the impact of long-range (even intercontinental) transport of pollution, which primarily occurs at elevated layers in the atmosphere.

Aerosols are among the most important pollutants and understanding transport of pollutants in elevated layers followed by downward mixing into the surface layer is essential for air quality forecasts. High quality aerosol profiles can also reveal key atmospheric structures like boundary layer height and its evolution. Aerosols are excellent tracers for gas phase pollutants, and direct observation of plumes from major events such as forest fires, dust storms, and volcanic eruptions require vertically resolved measurements at altitude. Most effects of aerosols on climate, such as scattering and absorption of sunlight and their effects on clouds, require knowing their vertical distribution trends.

Based on the same principle as radar, but using optical rather than radio wavelengths, LIDAR provides a real-time visual display of the aerosols and clouds along any path. LIDAR is becoming a standard tool for measuring aerosol trends, and informing improved weather and air quality forecast.

Sigma Space Corporation builds advanced LIDAR systems for space, aircraft, and surface applications. Since 2004 under license from NASA, we have made the surface-based Micro Pulse LIDAR (MPL), a sophisticated yet easy-to-use laser remote-sensing system. It provides continuous, unattended monitoring of aerosol and cloud profiles helping to meet the WMO challenge. And recently, we have created the ultimate portable “plug and play” LIDAR, the MiniMPL, to keep us all looking up!

We are participating to NASA DISCOVER-AQ Earth Venture Mission, with Micro Pulse Lidar (MPL) and the novel MiniMPL, for monitoring pollution in the near-surface atmosphere.

The Sigma Space MPL and MiniMPL will be deployed at surface sites to provide 24-hour lidar monitoring of boundary layer depth and vertical distribution of aerosols. These sites will be collocated with airborne measurements of the vertical profile of key trace species and boundary layer structure.

The NASA DISCOVER-AQ team finds the Sigma Space lidars desirable because of the significant advantages offered by the instruments in determining the vertical structure and optical properties of aerosols and boundary layer depth.

A principal goal of the DISCOVER-AQ mission is to improve the use of satellite observations to diagnose air quality at the Earth’s surface and to improve the use of satellite data in air quality models.

“Using satellite observations to characterize air pollution near Earth’s surface is a great technical challenge, as well as a great opportunity for improved decision-making and policy” said Phil DeCola, Chief Science Officer at Sigma Space, “and the NASA DISCOVER-AQ Earth Venture Mission brings together advanced airborne and ground-based measurement technologies, such as the Sigma Space MPL, which together provide accurate measurements of local changes in aerosol distributions that can effectively enhance the value of measurements made from space.”

For similar reasons, MPL and MiniMPL also received great attention from the meteorological community at the recently held World Meteorological Organization Congress in Geneva. Sigma Space collected requests from many delegates from European and African countries for MPL measurements of urban pollution, desert dust, and volcano ash. 

Lanham, June 1^st 2011

Sigma Space Corporation Micro Pulse Lidar has been shipped to Japan to study the volcanic ash of the recent eruption of Shinmoe-dake. A volcanic plume began to rise from the crater on Mount Shinmoe-dake in the Kirishimna range on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, starting January 19^th. A huge plume of gas and ash was causing damage up to 5 miles away from the eruption. Weathernews, one of the leading research and weather service companies in the world, asked for our Micro Pulse Lidar to monitor the volcanic plume and its evolution.

The MPL has been used to observe Shinmoe-dake from an observation point located to the east of it (18 km), in order to monitor the movements of the ash cloud over the most populated area.

The picture shows our Micro Pulse Lidar system setup at Tachibana Astronomical Observatory monitoring the Shinmoe-dake volcanic activity, March 2011. (Photo courtesy: Weathernews Inc., Japan)

“We used the Sigma Space Lidar to measure the density to gather a better understanding of the plume profile and transport mechanisms” said Lance Steele, meteorologist from the Weathernews Oklahoma Innovation Center, which works closely with the headquarters in Japan, to produce new and innovative disaster mitigation services for transportation industries worldwide.

Sigma Space Corporation, May 24, 2011