Stratospheric temperature measurements by two collocated NDSC lidars during UARS validation campaign

Abstract

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) mobile lidar system was deployed at the Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP), during an Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS)/Network for Detection of Stratospheric Change (NDSC) correlative measurement campaign (July–August 1992). The objective of this campaign was twofold: to intercompare two independent lidars and to provide ground‐based UARS correlative ozone and temperature validation measurements. This paper, for the first time, presents a coincident temperature intercomparison between two independently operating temperature lidar systems of similar capabilities. Systems and retrieval algorithms have been described and discussed in terms of error sources. The comparison of the two analyses have shown very similar results up to the upper mesosphere. The statistical mean differences of 0.5 K in the stratosphere and about 2 K in the mesosphere suggests insignificant bias throughout except below 35 km, where one of the data sets is contaminated by the volcanic aerosols from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Profiles of the root‐mean‐square (RMS) of the differences are in good agreement with random error estimates, except around 35–40 km where RMS is larger. These measurements can be used as the ground reference for UARS temperature validation. However, the spatial‐temporal coincidence between satellite and lidar needs to be carefully considered for meaningful validation.