scholarly journals Ozone profiles from clear sky thermal infrared measurements of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer: A retrieval approach accounting for thin cirrus

2011 ◽  
Vol 116 (D22) ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Wassmann ◽  
J. Landgraf ◽  
I. Aben
2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (11) ◽  
pp. 2046-2054 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Jonathan Gero ◽  
John A. Dykema ◽  
James G. Anderson

Abstract Spaceborne measurements pinned to international standards are needed to monitor the earth’s climate, quantify human influence thereon, and test forecasts of future climate change. The International System of Units (SI, from the French for Système International d’Unités) provides ideal measurement standards for radiometry as they can be realized anywhere, at any time in the future. The challenge is to credibly prove on-orbit accuracy at a claimed level against these international standards. The most accurate measurements of thermal infrared spectra are achieved with blackbody-based calibration. Thus, SI-traceability is obtained through the kelvin scale, making thermometry the foundation for on-orbit SI-traceable spectral infrared measurements. Thermodynamic phase transitions are well established as reproducible temperature standards and form the basis of the international practical temperature scale (International Temperature Scale of 1990, ITS-90). Appropriate phase transitions are known in the temperature range relevant to thermal infrared earth observation (190–330 K) that can be packaged such that they are chemically stable over the lifetime of a space mission, providing robust and traceable temperature calibrations. A prototype blackbody is presented that is compact, highly emissive, thermally stable and homogeneous, and incorporates a small gallium melting point cell. Precision thermal control of the blackbody allows the phase transition to be identified to within 5 mK. Based on these results, the viability of end-to-end thermometric calibration of both single-temperature and variable-temperature blackbodies on orbit by employing multiple-phase-change cells was demonstrated.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (9) ◽  
pp. 1995-2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. I. Palmer ◽  
L. Feng ◽  
H. Bösch

Abstract. We use realistic numerical experiments to assess the sensitivity of 8-day CO2 flux estimates, inferred from space-borne short-wave infrared measurements of column-averaged CO2 dry air mixing ratio XCO2, to the choice of Earth observing orbit. We focus on three orbits: (1) a low-inclination circular orbit used by the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM); (2) a sun-synchronous orbit used by the Japanese Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) and proposed for the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) instrument; and (3) a precessing orbit used by the International Space Station (ISS). For each orbit, we assume an instrument based on the specification of the OCO-2; for GOSAT we use the relevant instrument specification. Sun-synchronous orbits offer near global coverage within a few days but have implications for the density of clear-sky measurements. The TRMM and ISS orbits intensively sample tropical latitudes, with sun-lit clear-sky measurements evenly distributed between a.m./p.m. For a specified spatial resolution for inferred fluxes, we show there is a critical number of measurements beyond which there is a disproportionately small decrease in flux uncertainty. We also show that including spatial correlations for measurements and model errors (of length 300 km) reduces the effectiveness of high measurement density for flux estimation, as expected, and so should be considered when deciding sampling strategies. We show that cloud-free data from the TRMM orbit generally can improve the spatial resolution of CO2 fluxes achieved by OCO-2 over tropical South America, for example, from 950 km to 630 km, and that combining data from these low-inclination and sun-synchronous orbits have the potential to reduce this spatial length further. Decreasing the length of the error correlations to 50 km, reflecting anticipated future improvements to transport models, results in CO2 flux estimates on spatial scales that approach those observed by regional aircraft.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 4955-4975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Landgraf ◽  
Joost aan de Brugh ◽  
Remco Scheepmaker ◽  
Tobias Borsdorff ◽  
Haili Hu ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) spectrometer is the single payload of the Copernicus Sentinel 5 Precursor (S5P) mission. It measures Earth radiance spectra in the shortwave infrared spectral range around 2.3 µm with a dedicated instrument module. These measurements provide carbon monoxide (CO) total column densities over land, which for clear sky conditions are highly sensitive to the tropospheric boundary layer. For cloudy atmospheres over land and ocean, the column sensitivity changes according to the light path through the atmosphere. In this study, we present the physics-based operational S5P algorithm to infer atmospheric CO columns satisfying the envisaged accuracy ( <  15 %) and precision ( <  10 %) both for clear sky and cloudy observations with low cloud height. Here, methane absorption in the 2.3 µm range is combined with methane abundances from a global chemical transport model to infer information on atmospheric scattering. For efficient processing, we deploy a linearized two-stream radiative transfer model as forward model and a profile scaling approach to adjust the CO abundance in the inversion. Based on generic measurement ensembles, including clear sky and cloudy observations, we estimated the CO retrieval precision to be  ≤  11 % for surface albedo  ≥  0.03 and solar zenith angle  ≤  70°. CO biases of  ≤  3 % are introduced by inaccuracies in the methane a priori knowledge. For strongly enhanced CO concentrations in the tropospheric boundary layer and for cloudy conditions, CO errors in the order of 8 % can be introduced by the retrieval of cloud parameters of our algorithm. Moreover, we estimated the effect of a distorted spectral instrument response due to the inhomogeneous illumination of the instrument entrance slit in the flight direction to be  <  2 % with pseudo-random characteristics when averaging over space and time. Finally, the CO data exploitation is demonstrated for a TROPOMI orbit of simulated shortwave infrared measurements. Overall, the study demonstrates that for an instrument that performs in compliance with the pre-flight specifications, the CO product will meet the required product performance well.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 3815-3828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arno de Lange ◽  
Jochen Landgraf

Abstract. This paper discusses the retrieval of atmospheric methane profiles from the thermal infrared band of the Japanese Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) between 1210 and 1310 cm−1, using the RemoTeC analysis software. Approximately one degree of information on the vertical methane distribution is inferred from the measurements, with the main sensitivity at about 9 km altitude but little sensitivity to methane in the lower troposphere. For verification, we compare the GOSAT-TIR methane profile retrieval results with profiles from model fields provided by the Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) project, scaled to the total column measurements of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) at ground-based measurement sites. Without any radiometric corrections of GOSAT observations, differences between both data sets can be as large as 10 %. To mitigate these differences, we developed a correction scheme using a principal component analysis of spectral fit residuals and airborne observations of methane during the HIAPER pole-to-pole observations (HIPPO) campaign II and III. When the correction scheme is applied, the bias in the methane profile can be reduced to less than 2 % over the whole altitude range with respect to MACC model methane fields. Furthermore, we show that, with this correction, the retrievals result in smooth methane fields over land and ocean crossings and no differences can be discerned between daytime and nighttime measurements. Finally, a cloud filter is developed for the nighttime and ocean measurements. This filter is rooted in the GOSAT-TIR (thermal infrared) measurements and its performance, in terms of biases, is consistent with the cloud filter based on the GOSAT-SWIR (shortwave infrared) measurements. The TIR filter shows a higher acceptance rate of observations than the SWIR filter, at the cost of a higher uncertainty in the retrieved methane profiles.


2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee K. Balick ◽  
Alan R. Gillespie ◽  
Elsa Abbott ◽  
Donald Sabol ◽  
Anne B. Kahle ◽  
...  

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