Abstract
Abstract. This study presents two scientific and one operational retrieval algorithms used to obtain vertical distributions of bromine monoxide (BrO) from observations of the scattered solar light performed by the SCIAMACHY instrument in limb viewing geometry. The study begins with a discussion of the theoretical basis of all algorithms followed by an investigation of the retrieval sensitivity. Simulations with three different radiative transfer models allow us to analyze influence of the forward model implementation upon the retrieval results. By means of synthetic retrievals we analyze major sources of uncertainties in the resulting BrO profiles such as different BrO cross sections, their temperature dependence, and stratospheric aerosols. Finally, the reliability of SCIAMACHY BrO profile retrievals is demonstrated comparing results from different algorithms to each other and to balloon-borne observations.
Highlights
The important roles of bromine compounds in the destruction of stratospheric ozone and the related need for accurate knowledge of the stratospheric bromine budget have been discussed by different authors in recent years (Sinnhuber et al, 2005; Salawitch et al, 2005; Sioris et al, 2006; Kovalenko et al, 2007)
In the upper stratosphere (∼30–45 km) global vertical distributions of bromine monoxide (BrO) are retrieved from the measurements from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on board the Aura satellite launched in July 2004 (Kovalenko et al, 2007) whereas in the middle and lower stratosphere these are provided from the measurements by the Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric
BrO vertical distributions retrieved by three algorithms (IUP Bremen, MPI Mainz, and DLR) from SCIAMACHY limb measurements are compared with coinciding balloon-borne DOAS observations
Summary
It should be noted here that both MPI Mainz and IUP Bremen retrievals are precision optimized for scientific applications whereas DLR approach represents one for a speed optimized operational processor The latter is a part of the operational ESA processor employed to generate version 5.01 of Level 2 dataset. The retrieval algorithm of IUP Bremen described here is used to generate version 3.2 of scientific BrO dataset which is publicly available via the web page of the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), University of Bremen.
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