A32C-06
Evaluation of Meteorology Data for MOPITT Operational Processing

Wednesday, 16 December 2015: 11:35
3012 (Moscone West)
Daniel Ziskin, Merritt N Deeter, Helen Marie Worden, Debbie Mao and Vincil Dean, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere[1] (MOPITT) is an instrument flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite[2]. It measures CO using correlated spectroscopy[3]. As part of its processing it uses surface temperature, an atmospheric temperature profile and a water vapor profile from analysis. Since there are many analysis products on the market (e.g. GMAO, NCEP, ECMWF etc.) that meet MOPITT’s operational requirements, the question arises as to which product is most apt? There is a collection of “validation data” that MOPITT compares its CO retrievals against[4]. The validation dataset has been acquired by in situ air samples taken by aircraft at a series of altitudes. We can run our processing system in “validation mode” which processes the satellite data for only the days that validation data exists and for a spatial subset that corresponds to the region where the validation data has been collected. We will run the MOPITT retrievals in validation mode separately using each variety of analysis data. We will create a cost function that will provide a scalar estimate of the retrieved CO profile error relative to the validation dataset which is assumed to be “the truth”. The retrieval errors of each of the input datasets will be compared to each other to provide insight into the best choice for use in operational MOPITT processing.


[1] Drummond, J.R., “Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT),” in The Use of EOS for Studies of Atmospheric Physics, J. C. Gille, G. Visconti, eds. (North Holland, Amsterdam), pp. 77–101, 1992.

[2] 1999 EOS Reference Handbook: A Guide to NASA's Earth Science Enterprise and the Earth Observing System; Eds. Michael D. King and Reynold Greenstone; NASA, Greenbelt, MD, 1999.

[3] Drummond, J.R., G. P. Brasseur, G. R. Davis, J. C. Gille, J. C. McConnell, G. D. Pesket, H. G. Reichle, N. Roulet, MOPITT Mission Description Document (Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A7), 1993.

[4] Deeter, M. N., Martínez-Alonso, S., Edwards, D. P., Emmons, L. K., Gille, J. C., Worden, H. M., Sweeney, C., Pittman, J. V., Daube, B. C., and Wofsy, S. C.: The MOPITT Version 6 product: algorithm enhancements and validation, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 7, 3623-3632, doi:10.5194/amt-7-3623-2014, 2014.