GHGSat cloud and aerosol instrument

The GHGSat cloud and aerosol instrument is an auxiliary visible and near-infrared payload used with GHGSat greenhouse-gas imaging satellites to identify cloud and aerosol contamination in the spectrometer field of view.^[1][2] It supports trace-gas retrieval quality control by screening scenes before methane or carbon-dioxide plume interpretation, rather than serving as the primary greenhouse-gas spectrometer.^[1] The instrument covers 400-1000 nm with 1.9 nm spectral resolution.^[1] Its optical layout uses a diffraction grating to disperse incoming light onto detector pixel rows corresponding to constituent bands, giving the retrieval chain a colocated visible/NIR context channel for cloud and aerosol discrimination.^[1] For buyers evaluating GHGSat-derived emissions products, the important role is scene qualification: the payload helps decide whether a target view is suitable for plume retrieval, attribution, and quality-screened facility analysis.^[1]