FIRMOS campaign at Zugspitze
The FIRMOS (Far-Infrared Radiation Mobile Observation System) prototype has been developed to support ESA for the ground-based testing of the FORUM instrument.
FIRMOS was deployed in November 2018 at the Zugspitze Summit (2964 m asl) to to carry out a field campaign until the end of February 2019 with the aim to support the demonstration of FORUM capabilities and testing the FORUM measurement concept on real measurements and improve the Scientific Readiness Level.
In particular, the FIRMOS Zugspitze experiment will support the enhancement of a suitable ground-based facility and provided feedback to the ESA on:
- Exerting a number of hardware modifications to the Far IR-prototype instrument, according to project needs and good-practice;
- confirming and documenting the technical performance of the ground-based Far IR instrument and its suitability;
- demonstrating the FORUM capabilities in retrieving Temperature and Water vapour content in the upper troposphere/stratosphere using the Far IR;
- demonstrating the FORUM capabilities in improving retrievals of cloud micro-physics using the Far IR;
- analysing the potential of the system for airborne deployments;
- establish uncertainty budgets for ground-based measurements.
The FIRMOS prototype measured the atmospheric downwelling longwave radiance between the end of November 2018 until February 2019 at the Zugspitze summit observatory.
The campaign dataset is available through the ESA Earth Online platform.
Here are some pictures of the campaign:
