Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (SAO OMPS) formaldehyde retrieval

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents our new formaldehyde (H2CO) retrievals, obtained from spectra recorded by the nadir instrument of the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) flown on-board NASA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SUOMI-NPP) satellite. Our algorithm is similar to the one currently in place for the production of NASA's Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) operational H2CO product. We are now able to produce a consistent set of long term data from two different instruments that share a similar concept. The ongoing overlap period between OMI and OMPS offers a perfect opportunity to study the consistency between both data sets. The different spatial and spectral resolution of the instruments is a source of discrepancy in the retrievals despite the similarity of the physic assumptions of the algorithm. We have concluded that the reduced spectral resolution of OMPS in comparison with OMI is not a significant obstacle in obtaining good quality retrievals. Indeed, the improved signal to noise ratio (SNR) of OMPS with respect to OMI helps to reduce the noise of the retrievals performed using OMPS spectra. However, the size of OMPS spatial pixels imposes a limitation in the capability to distinguish particular features of H2CO that are discernible with OMI. With root mean square (RMS) residuals ~ 5 × 10−4 for individual pixels we estimate the detection limit to be about 7.5 × 1015 molecules cm−2. Total vertical column densities (VCD) errors for individual pixels range between 40 % for pixels with high concentrations to 100 % or more for pixels with concentrations at or below the detection limit. We compare different OMI products with our OMPS product using one year of data, between September 2012 and September 2013. The seasonality of the retrieved slant columns is captured similarly by all products but there are discrepancies in the values of the VCDs. The mean biases among the two OMI products and our OMPS product are 21 % between OMI SAO and OMPS SAO and 38 % between OMI BIRA and OMPS SAO for eight selected regions.

Tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub>, SO<sub>2</sub>, and HCHO over the East China Sea, using ship-based MAX-DOAS observations and comparison with OMI and OMPS satellites data

“…However, OMI has suffered from a so-called "row anomaly" and lost several cross-track positions data (Boersma et al, 2011). In this study, we use USTC-OMI tropospheric NO2 products (Liu et al, 2016;Su et al, 2017 (Dittman et al, 2002;Seftor et al, 2014;González Abad et al, 2016). Its equator crossing time in the ascending node is 13:30…”

Nitrogen dioxide observations from the Geostationary Trace gas and Aerosol Sensor Optimization (GeoTASO) airborne instrument: retrieval algorithm and measurements during DISCOVER-AQ Texas 2013

“…The GCAS instrument (Kowalewski and Janz, 2014) was deployed on the NASA King Air B200 aircraft as part of the campaign's airborne remote sensing payload, which also included the NASA High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) instrument (Hair et al, 2008) for aerosol studies. GCAS operates in a similar fashion to GeoTASO, using a 2-D CCD array detector to map slant columns of NO 2 in two dimensions.…”

Formaldehyde in the Tropical Western Pacific: Chemical Sources and Sinks, Convective Transport, and Representation in CAM‐Chem and the CCMI Models

“…Finally, Zeng et al () showed that four global chemistry models underestimated column HCHO by approximately 50% in the Southern Hemisphere, as compared to FTIR observations, suggesting that these models lack a significant source of HCHO. It is imperative to evaluate the vertical columns of these CTMs, particularly in remote locations, as many satellite retrievals use output from these models to correct for biases in the retrieval (e.g., De Smedt et al, ; González Abad et al, , ; Li et al, ).…”