Abstract
Abstract. The MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) satellite instrument has been making observations of atmospheric carbon monoxide since 2000. Recent enhancements to the MOPITT retrieval algorithm have resulted in the release of the version 7 (V7) product. Improvements include (1) representation of growing atmospheric concentrations of N2O, (2) use of meteorological fields from the MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications) reanalysis for the entire MOPITT mission (instead of MERRA), (3) use of the MODIS (Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Collection 6 cloud mask product (instead of Collection 5), (4) a new strategy for radiance-bias correction and (5) an improved method for calibrating MOPITT's near-infrared (NIR) radiances. Statistical comparisons of V7 validation results with corresponding V6 results are presented, using aircraft in situ measurements as the reference. Clear improvements are demonstrated for V7 products with respect to overall retrieval biases, bias variability and bias drift uncertainty.
Highlights
Principle sources of carbon monoxide (CO) in the troposphere include biomass burning, fossil fuel burning, and the oxidation of methane and other volatile organic compounds
Algorithm features introduced in the version 7 (V7) product have improved the temporal consistency of the retrievals
The effects of gradually increasing concentrations of N2O on MOPITT’s thermal-channel radiances, which could contribute to bias drift, are explicitly represented in the operational radiative transfer model
Summary
Principle sources of carbon monoxide (CO) in the troposphere include biomass burning, fossil fuel burning, and the oxidation of methane and other volatile organic compounds. MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) is an instrument on the NASA Terra satellite designed to permit retrievals of CO vertical profiles using both thermal-infrared (TIR) and near-infrared (NIR) observations. MOPITT CO retrieval products are available in three variants: TIR only, NIR only and the multispectral TIR-NIR product (Deeter et al, 2013) These three products exhibit contrasting retrieval sensitivity and error characteristics. The TIR-NIR product offers the greatest vertical resolution, and the greatest sensitivity to CO in the lower troposphere. This product exhibits relatively large random retrieval errors and bias drift. Processing parameters in the retrieval algorithm are revised as new validation datasets become available, resulting in improved understanding of MOPITT retrieval errors and long-term bias drift. Specific improvements incorporated into the MOPITT Version 7 product are described in detail below
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