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Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., 5, 3019-3045, 2012
www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/5/3019/2012/ doi:10.5194/amtd-5-3019-2012 © Author(s) 2012. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. |
Geophysical validation and long-term consistency between GOME-2/MetOp-A total ozone column and measurements from the sensors GOME/ERS-2, SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT and OMI/Aura
1Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
2Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut für Methodik der Fernerkundung (IMF), 82234 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
3Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), 3, Avenue Circulaire, 1180 Brussels, Belgium
4RT-Solutions, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract. The main aim of the paper is to assess the consistency of five years of Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2/Metop-A (GOME-2) total ozone columns and the long-term total ozone satellite monitoring database already in existence through an extensive inter-comparison and validation exercise using as reference Brewer and Dobson ground-based measurements. The behaviour of the GOME-2 measurements is being weighed against that of GOME (1995–2011), Ozone Monitoring Experiment (OMI) (since 2004) and the Scanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY (SCIAMACHY) (since 2002) total ozone column products. Over the background truth of the ground-based measurements, the total ozone columns are inter-evaluated using a suite of established validation techniques; the GOME-2 time series follow the same patterns as those observed by the other satellite sensors and in particular, on the average, GOME-2 data underestimate GOME data by about 0.80%, and underestimate SCIAMACHY data by 0.37% with no seasonal dependence of the differences between GOME-2, GOME and SCIAMACHY. The latter is expected since the three data sets are based on similar DOAS algorithms. This underestimation of GOME-2 is within the uncertainty of the reference data used in the comparisons. Compared to the OMI sensor, on the average GOME-2 data underestimate OMI_DOAS (collection 3) data by 1.28%, without any significant seasonal dependence of the differences between them. The lack of seasonality might be expected since both GDP 4.4 and OMI_DOAS are DOAS-type algorithms and both consider the variability of the stratospheric temperatures in their retrievals. Compared to the OMI_TOMS (collection 3) data, no bias was found. We hence conclude that the GOME-2 total ozone columns are well suitable to continue the long-term global total ozone record with the accuracy needed for climate monitoring studies.
Citation: Koukouli, M. E., Balis, D. S., Loyola, D., Valks, P., Zimmer, W., Hao, N., Lambert, J.-C., Van Roozendael, M., Lerot, C., and Spurr, R. J. D.: Geophysical validation and long-term consistency between GOME-2/MetOp-A total ozone column and measurements from the sensors GOME/ERS-2, SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT and OMI/Aura, Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., 5, 3019-3045, doi:10.5194/amtd-5-3019-2012, 2012.