The onboard imagers for the Canadian ACE SCISAT‐1 mission

Abstract

The Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) onboard the Canadian Space Agency’s SCISAT‐1 satellite has been in orbit since August of 2003. Its broad objective is to study the problem of stratospheric ozone depletion, particularly in the Arctic. The main instruments are two spectrometers, one an infrared Fourier Transform Spectrometer and the other a dual optical spectrophotometer sensitive in the UV and visible. Also included are two filtered imagers used to measure altitude profiles of atmospheric extinction and detect thin clouds. The nominal center wavelengths of the filters are 525 nm for the visible (VIS) imager and 1020 nm for the near‐infrared (NIR) imager. With the decommissioning of other satellite instruments used to monitor global aerosols [i.e., Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II), SAGE III, Polar Ozone and Aerosol Measurement (POAM) III, Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE)], the imagers provide much needed continuity in this data record. The data product from the imagers is still, however, in a preliminary state. Funding restrictions in the prelaunch period were responsible for an incomplete characterization of the imagers’ optics and electronics and prevented corrections being made for the problems found during testing. Postlaunch data analysis to correct for image artifacts is ongoing. A comparison with coincidental measurements from SAGE II shows that systematic errors from the preliminary analysis are within 5 and 20% for the VIS and NIR imagers, respectively, for uninverted profiles of optical depth. Despite the preliminary nature of the imager results, a paper describing the imagers and the initial operational data processing code is timely because the data are already being used.