IN31A-3712:
A New Long Term Data Set Of SO2 Column Amount From Volcanic Eruptions Using TOMS Data
Wednesday, 17 December 2014
Bradford L Fisher1, Nickolay Anatoly Krotkov2, Pawan K Bhartia3 and David P Haffner1, (1)Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, United States, (2)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
Volcanic SO2 is an important trace gas in the atmosphere that affects air quality and which is also a precursor to the production of sulfate aerosols. The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) was the first NASA UV instrument to measure daily maps of ozone and volcanic sulfur dioxide globally. It has been flown on four different satellites since its first launch aboard Nimbus 7 in 1978. The instrument provides a unique global long-term record of volcanic SO2, which have been invaluable to study the response of earth’s climate system to volcanic eruptions. However, complete TOMS SO2 L2 data has not yet been previously processed and properly archived. As part of the NASA MEaSUREs SO2 Program we updated heritage TOMS SO2 algorithm in preparation to re-processing and archiving TOMS data. We have also applied our TOMS algorithm to the L1B measurements of the hyperspectral UV Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) that has been flown on NASA Aura EOS spacecraft since 2004. Due to its hyperspectral capability and smaller field of view OMI SO2 sensitivity is more than hundred times larger than TOMS. The unique challenge is combining TOMS and OMI SO2 records to create a continuous long-term Climate Data record (CDR) to be released to the research community. This data set will provide researchers with continuous Level 2 estimates of SO2 and will help to validate and expand the current catalog of volcanic activity.
