Abstract
Abstract. A new atmospheric ozone profile climatology has been constructed by combining daytime ozone profiles from the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) Global Modeling Initiative (GMI) model simulation (M2GMI). The MLS and M2GMI ozone profiles are merged between 13 and 17 km (∼159 and 88 hPa), with MLS used for stratospheric and GMI for primarily tropospheric levels. The time record for profiles from MLS and GMI is August 2004–December 2016. The derived seasonal climatology consists of monthly zonal-mean ozone profiles in 5∘ latitude bands from 90∘ S to 90∘ N covering altitudes (in Z* log-pressure altitude) from zero to 80 km in 1 km increments. This climatology can be used as a priori information in satellite ozone retrievals, in atmospheric radiative transfer studies, and as a baseline to compare with other measured or model-simulated ozone. The MLS/GMI seasonal climatology shows a number of improvements compared with previous ozone profile climatologies based on MLS and ozonesonde measurements. These improvements are attributed mostly to continuous daily global coverage of GMI tropospheric ozone compared with sparse regional measurements from sondes. In addition to the seasonal climatology, we also derive an additive climatology to account for interannual variability in stratospheric zonal-mean ozone profiles which is based on a rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) analysis of Aura MLS ozone profiles. This REOF climatology starts in 1970 and captures most of the interannual variability in global stratospheric ozone including quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) signatures.
Highlights
McPeters and Labow (2012) and Labow et al (2015) combined ozone profile data from ozonesondes and the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) (Livesey et al, 2011) to use as climatological a priori information for satellite retrievals of ozone
The largest differences were in the tropics where M2GMI was lower than sonde by up to 10 %–20 % in low–mid troposphere, but M2GMI was higher than sonde by 40 %–50 % in the tropical tropopause region; the large percentage differences, can be due to relatively low mean background ozone concentrations of only ∼ 1–2 DU km−1
Wargan et al (2018) compared the annual mean ozone mixing ratio anomalies for 1998–2016 between sondes and M2GMI at several stations for 70, 100 and 200 hPa. Their comparisons show squared correlations varying from 0.62 to 0.93, and they concluded that the M2GMI simulation well captures the variability of tropospheric ozone including the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS) region
Summary
McPeters and Labow (2012) (hereafter, ML) and Labow et al (2015) combined ozone profile data from ozonesondes and the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) (Livesey et al, 2011) to use as climatological a priori information for satellite retrievals of ozone. We generated a new interannual ozone profile climatology based on MLS ozone, Solar Backscatter UltraViolet (SBUV) total ozone and rawinsonde wind data using a rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) method This REOF interannual climatology, just like the MLS/GMI seasonal climatology includes monthly zonal-mean profile ozone concentration (units DU km−1) within 5◦ latitude bands and altitudes from 0 to 80 km; the REOF climatology represents a long time-dependent record beginning in 1970 rather than a 12-month time record for the MLS/GMI climatology. The application of the MLS/GMI seasonal climatology by itself or together with the REOF interannual climatology as a priori enables more accurate profile and column ozone retrievals, including improvements for inter-calibrating and merging independent satellite ozone measurements such as for the SBUV Merged Ozone Data Set (MOD) (Frith et al, 2014). Additional details and figures not covered in the main text are included in the Supplement
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