Validation of 10-year SAO OMI Ozone Profile (PROFOZ) product using ozonesonde observations

Guanyu Huang (1) , Xiong Liu (1) , Kelly Chance (1) , Kai Yang (2) , Pawan K. Bhartia (3) , Zhaonan Cai (1) , Marc Allaart (4) , Gérard Ancellet (5) , Bertrand Calpini (6) , Gerrie J. R. Coetzee (7) , Emilio Cuevas-Agulló (8) , Manuel Cupeiro (9) , Hugo de Backer (10) , Manvendra K. Dubey (11) , Henry Fuelberg (12) , Masato Fujiwara (13) , Sophie Godin-Beekmann (14) , Tristan J. Hall (12) , Bryan Johnson (15) , Everette Joseph (16) , Rigel Kivi (17) , Bogumil Kois (18) , Ninong Komala (19) , Gert König-Langlo (20) , Giovanni Laneve (21) , Thierry Leblanc (22) , Marion Marchand (14) , Kenneth R. Minschwaner (23) , Gary Morris (24) , Michael J. Newchurch (25) , Shin-Ya Ogino (26) , Nozomu Ohkawara (27) , Ankie J. M. Piters (4) , Françoise Posny (28, 29) , Richard Querel (30) , Rinus Scheele (4) , Frank J. Schmidlin (3) , Russell C. Schnell (15) , Otto Schrems (20) , Henry Selkirk (31) , Masato Shiotani (32) , Pavla Skrivánková (33) , René Stübi (6) , Ghassan Taha (31) , David W. Tarasick (34) , Anne M. Thompson (3) , Valérie Thouret (35) , Matthew B. Tully (36) , Roeland van Malderen (10) , Holger Vömel (37) , Peter von Der Gathen (20) , Jacquelyn C. Witte (38) , Margarita Yela (39)

1 CfA - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
2 AOSC - Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science [College Park]
3 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
4 KNMI - Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
5 TROPO - LATMOS
6 Payerne Aerological Station
7 SAWS - South African Weather Service
8 IARC - Izaña Atmospheric Research Center
9 National Meteorological Service [Ushuaia]
10 IRM - Institut Royal Météorologique de Belgique [Bruxelles] - Royal Meteorological Institute
11 LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory
12 FSU | EOAS - Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science [Tallahassee]
13 Faculty of Environmental Earth Science [Sapporo]
14 STRATO - LATMOS
15 GML - ESRL Global Monitoring Laboratory [Boulder]
16 ASRC - Atmospheric Sciences Research Center
17 FMI - Finnish Meteorological Institute
18 IMGW - PIB - Institute of Meteorology and Water Management - National Research Institute
19 LAPAN - Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space
20 AWI - Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
21 EOSIAL - Earth Observation Satellite Images Applications Laboratory
22 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
23 Department of Physics [Socorro]
24 St. Edward's University
25 Department of Atmospheric Science [Huntsville]
26 DCOP - Department of Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Land Processes Research
27 Global Environment and Marine Department [Tokyo]
28 LACy - Laboratoire de l'Atmosphère et des Cyclones
29 OSU-Réunion - Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de La Réunion
30 NIWA - National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research [Lauder]
31 USRA - Universities Space Research Association
32 RISH - Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere
33 CHMI - Czech Hydrometeorological Institute
34 Environment and Climate Change Canada
35 LAERO - Laboratoire d'aérologie
36 BoM - Australian Bureau of Meteorology [Melbourne]
37 EOL - Earth Observing Laboratory [Boulder]
38 SSAI - Science Systems and Applications, Inc. [Lanham]
39 INTA - Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial

We validate the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Ozone Profile (PROFOZ) product from October 2004 through December 2014 retrieved by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) algorithm against ozonesonde observations. We also evaluate the effects of OMI row anomaly (RA) on the retrieval by dividing the dataset into before and after the occurrence of serious OMI RA, i.e., pre-RA (2004–2008) and post-RA (2009–2014). The retrieval shows good agreement with ozonesondes in the tropics and midlatitudes and for pressure  < ∼ 50 hPa in the high latitudes. It demonstrates clear improvement over the a priori down to the lower troposphere in the tropics and down to an average of ∼ 550 (300) hPa at middle (high) latitudes. In the tropics and midlatitudes, the profile mean biases (MBs) are less than 6 %, and the standard deviations (SDs) range from 5 to 10 % for pressure  < ∼ 50 hPa to less than 18 % (27 %) in the tropics (midlatitudes) for pressure  > ∼ 50 hPa after applying OMI averaging kernels to ozonesonde data. The MBs of the stratospheric ozone column (SOC, the ozone column from the tropopause pressure to the ozonesonde burst pressure) are within 2 % with SDs of  < 5 % and the MBs of the tropospheric ozone column (TOC) are within 6 % with SDs of 15 %. In the high latitudes, the profile MBs are within 10 % with SDs of 5–15 % for pressure  < ∼ 50 hPa but increase to 30 % with SDs as great as 40 % for pressure  > ∼ 50 hPa. The SOC MBs increase up to 3 % with SDs as great as 6 % and the TOC SDs increase up to 30 %. The comparison generally degrades at larger solar zenith angles (SZA) due to weaker signals and additional sources of error, leading to worse performance at high latitudes and during the midlatitude winter. Agreement also degrades with increasing cloudiness for pressure  > ∼ 100 hPa and varies with cross-track position, especially with large MBs and SDs at extreme off-nadir positions. In the tropics and midlatitudes, the post-RA comparison is considerably worse with larger SDs reaching 2 % in the stratosphere and 8 % in the troposphere and up to 6 % in TOC. There are systematic differences that vary with latitude compared to the pre-RA comparison. The retrieval comparison demonstrates good long-term stability during the pre-RA period but exhibits a statistically significant trend of 0.14–0.7 % year⁻¹ for pressure  < ∼ 80 hPa, 0.7 DU year⁻¹ in SOC, and −0. 33 DU year⁻¹ in TOC during the post-RA period. The spatiotemporal variation of retrieval performance suggests the need to improve OMI's radiometric calibration especially during the post-RA period to maintain the long-term stability and reduce the latitude/season/SZA and cross-track dependency of retrieval quality.

Domains: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]; Ocean, Atmosphere

Guanyu Huang, Xiong Liu, Kelly Chance, Kai Yang, Pawan K. Bhartia, et al.. Validation of 10-year SAO OMI Ozone Profile (PROFOZ) product using ozonesonde observations. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 2017, 10 (7), pp.2455-2475. ⟨10.5194/amt-10-2455-2017⟩. ⟨insu-01562352⟩