Ozone Profile Retrievals from GOME-2 UV/Visible Measurements

Abstract:

It has been shown that adding visible measurements in the Chappuis band to ultraviolet (UV) measurements in the Hartley/Huggins bands can significantly enhance retrieval sensitivity to lower tropospheric ozone from backscattered solar radiances due to deeper photon penetration in the visible to the surface than in the ultraviolet. The first NASA Eearth Venture Instrument TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) instrument is being developed to measure backscattered solar radiation in two channels (~290-490 and 540-740 nm) and make atmospheric pollution measurements over North America from the Geostationary orbit; the primary purpose of including the second channel is to improve lower tropospheric ozone retrieval for air quality monitoring. However, this retrieval enhancement has yet to be solidly demonstrated from existing measurements due to the weak ozone absorption in the visible and strong interference from surface reflectance.

We present retrievals from GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring and Experiment-2) UV and visible measurements using the SAO optimal estimation based ozone profile retrieval algorithm, to directly explore the retrieval improvement in lower tropospheric ozone from additional visible measurements. To reduce the retrieval interference from surface reflectance, we add characterization of surface spectral reflectance in the visible into the ozone profile algorithm based on existing surface reflectance spectra and MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) climatology. We evaluate the retrieval performance of UV/visible retrieval over the UV retrieval in terms of retrieved lower tropospheric ozone and increase in degree of free for signal (DFS) over the globe in different seasons, and we validate both retrievals against ozonesonde measurements.