Static wind imaging Michelson interferometer for the measurement of stratospheric wind fields

Abstract

The stratospheric wind field provides significant information on the dynamics, constituent, and energy transport in the Earth's atmosphere. The measurement of the atmospheric wind field on a global basis at these heights is still lacking because few wind imaging interferometers have been developed that can measure wind in this region. In this paper, we describe an advanced compact static wind imaging Michelson interferometer (SWIMI) developed to measure the stratospheric wind field using near-infrared airglow emissions. The instrument contains a field widened and thermal compensated interferometer with a segmented reflective mirror in one arm, which replace the moving mirror in a conventional Michelson interferometer, to provide interference phase steps. The field widened, achromatic, temperature compensated scheme has been designed and manufactured. The characterization, calibration, inversion software, and test of the instrument have been completed. The capacity of two-dimensional wind, temperature, and ozone measurement of the instrument has been verified in the lab experiment and model simulation. What we believe to be the novel principle, modeling, design, and experiment demonstrated in this paper will offer a significant reference to the static, simultaneous and real-time detection and inversion of the global wind field, temperature, and ozone.