Heat flux measurements now possible over a path length up to 12 km
Published: Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Is a path length of 4.5 kilometres not enough for your meteorology, climate or hydrology studies? We now offer a new scintillometer that can go up to 12 km, the X-LAS MkII. It is very user-friendly and ideal for measuring the heat fluxes between the surface and the atmosphere at landscape scale. For example, across forests or large areas of mixed agriculture, or across cities to investigate urban heat island effects on weather, climate and air quality.
What is a scintillometer?
A scintillometer is a combination of an optical transmitter and a receiver placed at opposite ends of a path above the area that needs to be monitored. Turbulence in the air is caused by variations in temperature, humidity and pressure; and the scintillometer measures these variations using a pulsed beam of infrared light emitted by the transmitter and detected by the receiver.
What does a scintillometer do?
Scintillometers measure the change in refractive index of the air (Cn2). When you plug in the accessory meteorological sensor kit into the X-LAS MkII receiver and enter the characteristics of the measurement site, the scintillometer calculates the sensible heat flux in real time. This gives insights into local effects, for example the urban climate in large cities such as New York.
What’s new about the X-LAS MkII
The LAS MkII, a digital replacement for the original analogue LAS, has been available for several years. Now, in response to customer requests for an update of the old analogue, we designed a digital replacement for the X-LAS as well. The X-LAS MKII is a new and much improved extra-large aperture scintillometer for measurements over longer distances.
Sharing features and functions of the LAS MkII, it requires little maintenance, provides a digital signal output with internal data logging, has no moving parts and the power consumption is low. Another great benefit is the built-in display and keypad.
The housing has been completely redesigned using carbon fibre parts to reduce the size and weight, increase rigidity and make it more watertight. The carbon fibre also reduces the impact of variations of the outdoor temperature, resulting in very reliable data.
Read all the details and specifications on the product page and request a quote. If you want to go the extra distance, X-LAS MkII is the solution for your measurement campaign.
