Visibility and Optical Properties Great Smoky Mountains National Park OPCRDS Deployment

In partnership with the National Park Service and Aerodyne Research Inc., Handix Scientific deployed its first commercial Open Path Cavity Ringdown Spectrometer (OPCRDS) at the IMPROVE visibility monitoring site at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in late summer and fall of 2016. The purpose of the deployment was to evaluate the impacts of high relative humidity on aerosol extinction (and visibility), compare to existing optical and chemical methods in place at the site used to estimate visibility, and test various components of the new OPCRDS instrument. Example of ambient light extinction coefficients (OPCRDS), dry light extinction coefficients (Aerodyne Research CAPS PMex) and relative humidity during the Great Smoky Mountains National Park deployment. Gordon, T. D., et al., Open-Path, Closed-Path and Reconstructed Aerosol Extinction at a Rural Site. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, Taylor & Francis. doi:10.1080/10962247.2018.1452801, 2018. Publication