Twenty-Five-Fold Reduction in Measurement Uncertainty for a Molecular Line Intensity

Abstract

To accurately attribute sources and sinks of molecules like CO_{2}, remote sensing missions require line intensities (S) with relative uncertainties u_{r}(S)<0.1%. However, discrepancies in S of ≈1% are common when comparing different experiments, thus limiting their potential impact. Here we report a cavity ring-down spectroscopy multi-instrument comparison which revealed that the hardware used to digitize analog ring-down signals caused variability in spectral integrals which yield S. Our refined approach improved measurement accuracy 25-fold, resulting in u_{r}(S)=0.06%.