Mark J. Filipiak

The Earth observing system microwave limb sounder (EOS MLS) on the aura Satellite

The Earth Observing System Microwave Limb Sounder measures several atmospheric chemical species (OH, HO/sub 2/, H/sub 2/O, O/sub 3/, HCl, ClO, HOCl, BrO, HNO/sub 3/, N/sub 2/O, CO, HCN, CH/sub 3/CN, volcanic SO/sub 2/), cloud ice, temperature, and geopotential height to improve our understanding of stratospheric ozone chemistry, the interaction of composition and climate, and pollution in the upper troposphere. All measurements are made simultaneously and continuously, during both day and night. The instrument uses heterodyne radiometers that observe thermal emission from the atmospheric limb in broad spectral regions centered near 118, 190, 240, and 640 GHz, and 2.5 THz. It was launched July 15, 2004 on the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Aura satellite and started full-up science operations on August 13, 2004. An atmospheric limb scan and radiometric calibration for all bands are performed routinely every 25 s. Vertical profiles are retrieved every 165 km along the suborbital track, covering 82/spl deg/S to 82/spl deg/N latitudes on each orbit. Instrument performance to date has been excellent; data have been made publicly available; and initial science results have been obtained.

Validation of Aura Microwave Limb Sounder stratospheric ozone measurements

[1] The Earth Observing System (EOS) Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) aboard the Aura satellite has provided essentially daily global measurements of ozone (O3) profiles from the upper troposphere to the upper mesosphere since August of 2004. This paper focuses on validation of the MLS stratospheric standard ozone product and its uncertainties, as obtained from the 240 GHz radiometer measurements, with a few results concerning mesospheric ozone. We compare average differences and scatter from matched MLS version 2.2 profiles and coincident ozone profiles from other satellite instruments, as well as from aircraft lidar measurements taken during Aura Validation Experiment (AVE) campaigns. Ozone comparisons are also made between MLS and balloon-borne remote and in situ sensors. We provide a detailed characterization of random and systematic uncertainties for MLS ozone. We typically find better agreement in the comparisons using MLS version 2.2 ozone than the version 1.5 data. The agreement and the MLS uncertainty estimates in the stratosphere are often of the order of 5%, with values closer to 10% (and occasionally 20%) at the lowest stratospheric altitudes, where small positive MLS biases can be found. There is very good agreement in the latitudinal distributions obtained from MLS and from coincident profiles from other satellite instruments, as well as from aircraft lidar data along the MLS track.

The UARS and EOS Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) Experiments

Abstract The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) experiments obtain measurements of atmospheric composition, temperature, and pressure by observations of millimeter- and submillimeter-wavelength thermal emission as the instrument field of view is scanned through the atmospheric limb. Features of the measurement technique include the ability to measure many atmospheric gases as well as temperature and pressure, to obtain measurements even in the presence of dense aerosol and cirrus, and to provide near-global coverage on a daily basis at all times of day and night from an orbiting platform. The composition measurements are relatively insensitive to uncertainties in atmospheric temperature. An accurate spectroscopic database is available, and the instrument calibration is also very accurate and stable. The first MLS experiment in space, launched on the (NASA) Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in September 1991, was designed primarily to measure stratospheric profiles of ClO, O3, H2O, and atmospheric press...

Validation of Aura Microwave Limb Sounder Ozone by ozonesonde and lidar measurements

We present validation studies of MLS version 2.2 upper tropospheric and stratospheric ozone profiles using ozonesonde and lidar data as well as climatological data. Ozone measurements from over 60 ozonesonde stations worldwide and three lidar stations are compared with coincident MLS data. The MLS ozone stratospheric data between 150 and 3 hPa agree well with ozonesonde measurements, within 8% for the global average. MLS values at 215 hPa are biased high compared to ozonesondes by A`20% at middle to high latitude, although there is a lot of variability in this altitude region. Comparisons between MLS and ground-based lidar measurements from Mauna Loa, Hawaii, from the Table Mountain Facility, California, and from the Observatoire de Haute-Provence, France, give very good agreement, within A`5%, for the stratospheric values. The comparisons between MLS and the Table Mountain Facility tropospheric ozone lidar show that MLS data are biased high by A`30% at 215 hPa, consistent with that indicated by the ozonesonde data. We obtain better global average agreement between MLS and ozonesonde partial column values down to 215 hPa, although the average MLS values at low to middle latitudes are higher than the ozonesonde values by up to a few percent. MLS v2.2 ozone data agree better than the MLS v1.5 data with ozonesonde and lidar measurements. MLS tropical data show the wave one longitudinal pattern in the upper troposphere, with similarities to the average distribution from ozonesondes. High upper tropospheric ozone values are also observed by MLS in the tropical Pacific from June to November.

Diurnal warm‐layer events in the western Mediterranean and European shelf seas

We characterize near-surface ocean diurnal warm-layer events, using satellite observations and fields from numerical weather forecasting. The study covers April to September, 2006, over the area 11 degrees W to 17 degrees E and 35 degrees N to 57 degrees N, with 0.1 degrees cells. We use hourly satellite SSTs from which peak amplitudes of diurnal cycles in SST (dSSTs) can be estimated with error similar to 0.3 K. The diurnal excursions of SST observed are spatially and temporally coherent. The largest dSSTs exceed 6 K, affect 0.01% of the surface, and are seen in the Mediterranean, North and Irish Seas. There is an anti-correlation between the magnitude and the horizontal length scale of dSST events. Events wherein dSST exceeds 4 K have length scales of = 40 km. From the frequency distribution of different measures of wind-speed minima, we infer that extreme dSST maxima arise where conditions of low wind speed are sustained from early morning to mid afternoon.

Intercomparisons of trace gases profiles from the Odin/SMR and Aura/MLS limb sounders

This paper presents the intercomparison of O(3), HNO(3), ClO, N(2)O and CO profiles measured by the two spaceborne microwave instruments MLS ( Microwave Limb Sounder) and SMR ( Submillimetre Radiometer) on board the Aura and Odin satellites, respectively. We compared version 1.5 level 2 data from MLS with level 2 data produced by the French data processor version 222 and 225 and by the Swedish data processor version 2.0 for several days in September 2004 and in March 2005. For the five gases studied, an overall good agreement is found between both instruments. Most of the observed discrepancies between SMR and MLS are consistent with results from other intercomparison studies involving MLS or SMR. O(3) profiles retrieved from the SMR 501.8 GHz band are noisier than MLS profiles but mean biases between both instruments do not exceed 10%. SMR HNO(3) profiles are biased low relative to MLSs by similar to 30% above the profile peak. In the lower stratosphere, MLS ClO profiles are biased low by up to 0.3 ppbv relative to coincident SMR profiles, except in the Southern Hemisphere polar vortex in the presence of chlorine activation. N(2)O profiles from both instruments are in very good agreement with mean biases not exceeding 15%. Finally, the intercomparison between SMR and MLS CO profiles has shown a good agreement from the middle stratosphere to the middle mesosphere in spite of strong oscillations in the MLS profiles. In the upper mesosphere, MLS CO concentrations are biased high relative to SMR while negative values in the MLS retrievals are responsible for a negative bias in the tropics around 30 hPa.