Total ozone observations at Athens, Greece by satellite-borne and ground-based instrumentation

Abstract

A comparison is made of total ozone (TOZ) content observations conducted by the Dobson spectrophotometer No. 118, the SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY), the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) over Athens, Greece, during 1991–2008. Spearman's and Wilcoxon's tests were used to determine the measure of the agreement between the ground-based and satellite column ozone data. The correlation coefficient between Dobson and Nimbus-7, ADEOS, Earth Probe, OMI and SCIAMACHY observations was found to be 0.95, 0.96, 0.94, 0.93 and 0.87, respectively, while the correlation coefficient between total ozone observations of SCIAMACHY and Earth Probe-TOMS and OMI is 0.85 and 0.93, respectively. SCIAMACHY overestimates the column ozone with respect to Dobson, Earth Probe-TOMS and OMI by 10, 15 and 3 DU, respectively, while Dobson underestimates the column ozone with respect to Nimbus-7, ADEOS and OMI by 5, 10 and 8 DU. The results obtained confirm that the Athens Dobson station may continue to be considered as a ground-truth total ozone station for the validation of the satellite column ozone observations. In addition, linear regression analysis of the deseasonalized monthly mean column ozone, as derived from Dobson measurements, gives an increase of +0.33 ± 0.07% per year during 1991–2000 and a decrease of –0.33 ± 0.07% per year for the period 2001–2008.