Update on the TROPESS ozone data products: Evaluation, validation and a preliminary examination of their utility in tropospheric ozone trend analysis

Abstract

We present an update on the status of the tropospheric ozone data products retrieved from satellite observations. Specifically, we will highlight data from the TRopospheric Ozone and its Precursors from Earth System Sounding (TROPESS) project which is a NASA effort that provides retrievals of atmospheric ozone utilizing radiances from a variety of different satellite instruments. The TROPESS project provides ozone data that provides additional data that can used with record established by the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) which flew on NASA’s Aura satellite. The new multispectral retrievals of ozone utilize the (Multi-Spectra, Multi-Species, Multi-Sensors Retrievals of Trace Gases (MUSES) retrieval framework to produce consistent estimations of ozone from different satellite radiances. TROPESS ozone data products include those using data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) instruments. The TROPESS joint-satellite data products provide ozone retrievals with vertical sensitivity similar to that seen in TES observations and allow a continuation of the TES ozone data record. Utilizing satellite instruments that observe with wide swaths will provide much broader spatial sampling than TES was able to provide. The TROPESS team is currently processing ozone data records using radiances from CrIS, AIRS, OMI, TROPOMI and retrievals using combinations of the different satellites. All of the TROPESS products are being validated through comparisons to ozonesondes as well as comparisons to chemical reanalysis products. We will provide an update on the results from these comparisons as well highlighting the differences in vertical sensitivity and spatial sampling of the different products. We will highlight the differences in the sensitivity of the retrievals to ozone in the troposphere and validation of the satellite retrievals at those pressure levels. We will show statistical analysis for the errors in the satellite retrievals and their comparisons to the ozonesondes. Lastly, we will present results showing the time record of the different ozone products, including showing how the comparisons to models and ozonesondes change with time. Utilizing the AIRS and OMI instrument data will allow us to examine the tropospheric ozone data record going back to 2005 and we will share results of how the TROPESS products can contribute to determining trends in tropospheric ozone.