Open-path measurement of stable water isotopologues using mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy.

We present an open-path mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy (DCS) system capable of precise measurement of the stable water isotopologues H 2 16 O and HD 16 O. This system ran in a remote configuration at a rural test site for 3.75 months with 60 % uptime and achieved a precision of < 2 ‰ on the normalized ratio of H 2 16 O and HD 16 O (δ D) in 1000 s. Here, we compare the δ D values from the DCS system to those from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) isotopologue point sensor network. Over the multi-month campaign, the mean difference between the DCS δ D values and the NEON δ D values from a similar ecosystem is < 2 ‰ with a standard deviation of 18 ‰, which demonstrates the inherent accuracy of DCS measurements over a variety of atmospheric conditions. We observe time-varying diurnal profiles and seasonal trends that are mostly correlated between the sites on daily timescales. This observation motivates the development of denser ecological monitoring networks aimed at understanding regional- and synoptic-scale water transport. Precise and accurate open-path measurements using DCS provide new capabilities for such networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]