A convolution algorithm to calculate differential cross sections of the Ring effect in the Earth’s atmosphere based on rotational Raman scattering

Abstract

The Ring effect refers to the filling in of Fraunhofer lines, which is mainly attributed to the rotational Raman scattering of solar spectra by N2 and O2 molecules in the atmosphere. The Ring effect is one of the most significant factors affecting the accuracy of retrieving concentrations of atmospheric trace gases, such as NO2 and SO2, from satellite observations through differential optical absorption spectroscopy. First in this study, the solar spectrum measured by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument onboard NASA Aura is convolved with the rotational Raman cross section of the atmosphere, which is calculated from the rotational Raman cross sections of N2 and O2 molecules, and divided by the original solar spectrum. The slowly varying term is removed by fitting it with a cubic polynomial to obtain the differential Ring spectrum. The results agree well with the calculations using a radiative transfer model (R 2=0.9663). Second, the differential Ring spectrum is computed using two fixed wavelengths of 410 nm and 488 nm, and the resulting differential Ring spectra are similar to that calculated with varying wavelengths and agree well with the calculation using the radiative transfer model (R 2=0.9624 and 0.9639 respectively). The computation time using the fixed wavelength is about 0.128% of that using a varying wavelength. Finally, we found that the frequency spectrum of the Raman cross sections for the atmosphere, N2 molecules and O2 molecules are similar; thus, the Raman cross section of N2 or O2 molecules can be used to compute the approximate Ring effect for simplicity.