A new MesosphEO dataset of temperature profiles from 35 to 85 km using Rayleigh scattering at limb from GOMOS/ENVISAT daytime observations

Abstract : The scattering of sunlight by the Earth atmosphere above the top of the stratospheric layer, about 30-35 km altitude, is only due to Rayleigh scattering by atmospheric molecules. Its intensity is then directly proportional to the atmospheric density. It is then possible to retrieve a temperature profile in absolute value using the hydrostatic equation and the perfect gas law, assuming that the temperature is known from a climatological model at the top of the density profile. This technique is applied to Rayleigh lidar observations since more than 35 years (Hauchecorne and Chanin, 1980). The GOMOS star occultation spectrometer observed the sunlight scattering at limb during daytime to remove it from the star spectrum. In the frame of the ESA funded MesosphEO project, GOMOS Rayleigh scattering profiles in the spectral range 400-460 nm have been used to retrieve temperature profiles from 35 to 85 km with a 2-km vertical resolution. A dataset of more than 310 thousands profiles from 2002 to 2012 is available for climatology and atmospheric dynamics studies. The validation of this dataset using NDACC Rayleigh lidars and MLS-AURA and SABER-TIMED will be presented. Preliminary results on the variability of the upper stratosphere and the mesosphere will be shown. We propose to apply this technique in the future to ALTIUS observations. The Rayleigh scattering technique can be applied to any sounder observing the day-time limb on the near-UV and visible spectrum.