Geophysical validation of MIPAS-ENVISAT operational ozone data

Year: 2007

Authors: Cortesi U., Lambert J.C., De Clercq C., Bianchini G., Blumenstock T., Bracher A., Castelli E., Catoire V., Chance K.V., De Mazière M., Demoulin P., Godin-Beekmann S., Jones N., Jucks K., Keim C., Kerzenmacher T., Kuellmann H., Kuttippurath J., Iarlori M., Liu G.Y., Liu Y., McDermid I.S., Meijer Y.J., Mencaraglia F., Mikuteit S., Oelhaf H., Piccolo C., Pirre M., Raspollini P., Ravegnani F., Reburn W.J., Redaelli G., Remedios J.J., Sembhi H., Smale D., Steck T., Taddei A., Varotsos C., Vigouroux C., Waterfall A., Wetzel G., Wood S.

Autors Affiliation: Istituto di Fisica Applicata N. Carrara (IFAC), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, Firenze, Italy; Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Brussels, Belgium; Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung (IMK), Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH (FZK), Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany; Institute of Environmental Physics and Remote Sensing, University of Bremen (IUP/IFE), Bremen, Germany; Istituto de Scienze dell\’Atmosfera e del Clima (ISAC), CNR, Bologna, Italy; Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l\’Environnement (LPCE), CNRS, Université d\’Orléans, Orléans, France; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, United States; Institut d\’Astrophysique et de Géophysique, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium; Service d\’ Aéronomie/IPSL, CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France; University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia; University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; CETEMPS, Universita di L\’Aquila, Dipartimento di Fisica, L\’Aquila, Italy; Institute of Atmospheric Physics, CAS, Beijing, China; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Table Mountain Facility, Wrightwood, CA, United States; National Institute for for Public Health and the Environment, RIVM, LVM, Bilthoven, Netherlands; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), United Kingdom; University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom; National Institute for Water and Air Research Ltd., Lauder, New Zealand; University of Athens, Faculty of Physics, Dept. of Applied Physics, Greece; ESA-ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands

Abstract: The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), on-board the European ENVIronmental SATellite (ENVISAT) launched on 1 March 2002, is a middle infrared Fourier Transform spectrometer measuring the atmospheric emission spectrum in limb sounding geometry. The instrument is capable to retrieve the vertical distribution of temperature and trace gases, aiming at the study of climate and atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, and at applications to data assimilation and weather forecasting. MIPAS operated in its standard observation mode for approximately two years, from July 2002 to March 2004, with scans performed at nominal spectral resolution of 0.025 cm -1 and covering the altitude range from the mesosphere to the upper troposphere with relatively high vertical resolution (about 3 km in the stratosphere). Only reduced spectral resolution measurements have been performed subsequently. MIPAS data were re-processed by ESA using updated versions of the Instrument Processing Facility (IPF v4.61 and v4.62) and provided a complete set of level-2 operational products (geolocated vertical profiles of temperature and volume mixing ratio of H2O, O3, HNO3, CH4, N2O and NO2) with quasi continuous and global coverage in the period of MIPAS full spectral resolution mission. In this paper, we report a detailed description of the validation of MIPAS-ENVISAT operational ozone data, that was based on the comparison between MIPAS v4.61 (and, to a lesser extent, v4.62) O3 VMR profiles and a comprehensive set of correlative data, including observations from ozone sondes, ground-based lidar, FTIR and microwave radiometers, remote-sensing and in situ instruments on-board stratospheric aircraft and balloons, concurrent satellite sensors and ozone fields assimilated by the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting. A coordinated effort was carried out, using common criteria for the selection of individual validation data sets, and similar methods for the comparisons. This enabled merging the individual results from a variety of independent reference measurements of proven quality (i.e. well characterized error budget) into an overall evaluation of MIPAS O3 data quality, having both statistical strength and the widest spatial and temporal coverage. Collocated measurements from ozone sondes and ground-based lidar and microwave radiometers of the Network for the Detection Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) were selected to carry out comparisons with time series of MIPAS O 3 partial columns and to identify groups of stations and time periods with a uniform pattern of ozone differences, that were subsequently used for a vertically resolved statistical analysis. The results of the comparison are classified according to synoptic and regional systems and to altitude intervals, showing a generally good agreement within the comparison error bars in the upper and middle stratosphere. Significant differences emerge in the lower stratosphere and are only partly explained by the larger contributions of horizontal and vertical smoothing differences and of collocation errors to the total uncertainty. Further results obtained from a purely statistical analysis of the same data set from NDACC ground-based lidar stations, as well as from additional ozone soundings at middle latitudes and from NDACC ground-based FTIR measurements, confirm the validity of MIPAS O3 profiles down to the lower stratosphere, with evidence of larger discrepancies at the lowest altitudes. The validation against O3 VMR profiles using collocated observations performed by other satellite sensors (SAGE II, POAM III, ODIN-SMR, ACE-FTS, HALOE, GOME) and ECMWF assimilated ozone fields leads to consistent results, that are to a great extent compatible with those obtained from the comparison with ground-based measurements. Excellent agreement in the full vertical range of the comparison is shown with respect to collocated ozone data from stratospheric aircraft and balloon instruments, that was mostly obtained in very good spatial and temporal coincidence

Journal/Review: ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS

Volume: 7 (18)      Pages from: 4807  to: 4867

KeyWords: atmospheric chemistry; atmospheric dynamics; emission; Envisat-1; geometry; geophysical method; ozone; vertical distribution; weather forecasting
DOI: 10.5194/acp-7-4807-2007

Citations: 104
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