Abstract
Abstract. IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) is the core instrument of the currently three Metop (Meteorological operational) satellites of EUMETSAT (European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites). The MUSICA IASI processing has been developed in the framework of the European Research Council project MUSICA (MUlti-platform remote Sensing of Isotopologues for investigating the Cycle of Atmospheric water). The processor performs an optimal estimation of the vertical distributions of water vapour (H2O), the ratio between two water vapour isotopologues (the HDO/H2O ratio), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and nitric acid (HNO3) and works with IASI radiances measured under cloud-free conditions in the spectral window between 1190 and 1400 cm−1. The retrieval of the trace gas profiles is performed on a logarithmic scale, which allows the constraint and the analytic treatment of ln [HDO]−ln [H2O] as a proxy for the HDO/H2O ratio. Currently, the MUSICA IASI processing has been applied to all IASI measurements available between October 2014 and June 2021 and about two billion individual retrievals have been performed. Here we describe the MUSICA IASI full retrieval product data set. The data set is made available in the form of netCDF data files that are compliant with version 1.7 of the CF (Climate and Forecast) metadata convention. For each individual retrieval these files contain information on the a priori usage and constraint, the retrieved atmospheric trace gas and temperature profiles, profiles of the leading error components, and information on vertical representativeness in the form of the averaging kernels as well as averaging kernel metrics, which are more handy than the full kernels. We discuss data filtering options and give examples of the high horizontal and continuous temporal coverage of the MUSICA IASI data products. For each orbit an individual standard output data file is provided with comprehensive information for each individual retrieval, resulting in a rather large data volume (about 40 TB for the almost 7 years of data with global daily coverage). This, at a first glance, apparent drawback of large data files and data volume is counterbalanced by multiple possibilities of data reuse, which are briefly discussed. Examples of standard data output files and a README .pdf file informing users about access to the total data set are provided via https://doi.org/10.35097/408 (Schneider et al., 2021b). In addition, an extended output data file is made available via https://doi.org/10.35097/412 (Schneider et al., 2021a). It contains the same variables as the standard output files together with Jacobians (and spectral responses) for many different uncertainty sources and gain matrices (due to this additional variables it is called the extended output). We use these additional data for assessing the typical impact of different uncertainty sources – like surface emissivity or spectroscopic parameters – and different cloud types on the retrieval results. The extended output file is limited to 74 example observations (over a polar, mid-latitudinal, and tropical site); its data volume is only 73 MB, and it is thus recommended to users for having a quick look at the data.
Highlights
The IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer, a thermal nadir sensor; Blumstein et al, 2004) instrument aboard the Metop (Meteorological Operational) satellites presents possibilities for measuring a large variety of different atmospheric trace gases (e.g. Clerbaux et al, 2009) with daily global coverage
The atmospheric state variables that are independently constrained during the MUSICA IASI processing are the vertical profiles of the water vapour isotopologue proxies H2O and δD and the vertical profiles of N2O, CH4, HNO3, and atmospheric temperature
For all the trace gases the retrieval works with the state variables in a logarithmic scale
Summary
The IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer, a thermal nadir sensor; Blumstein et al, 2004) instrument aboard the Metop (Meteorological Operational) satellites presents possibilities for measuring a large variety of different atmospheric trace gases (e.g. Clerbaux et al, 2009) with daily global coverage. De Wachter et al, 2012), nitric acid (HNO3; Ronsmans et al, 2016), nitrous oxide and methane (N2O and CH4; De Wachter et al, 2017; Siddans et al, 2017; García et al., 2018), the ratio between different water vapour isotopologues (Schneider and Hase, 2011; Lacour et al, 2012), and different volatile organic compounds (Franco et al, 2018) These diverse opportunities of IASI together with the good horizontal and daily coverage result in a large number of IASI products generated in the context of often computationally expensive retrievals. There we describe the cloud filtering and the comprehensive information that is provided about the a priori state vectors and the generation of the applied constraints This information is essential for being able to perform a posteriori processing according to Diekmann et al (2021) or to optimally combine the data with other remote sensing data products (e.g. Schneider et al, 2021c). Appendix C explains how the data can be used in the form of a total or partial column product
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