VALIDATION OF MIPAS TEMPERATURE DATA WITH ALOMAR RMR-LIDAR MEASUREMENTS FROM JULY 2002 TO MARCH 2004

• Main Authors: G Baumgarten, A Schöch, U Blum, K H Fricke
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alomar; Andøya; Norway; Tangent Point; Northern Norway
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1055.5503; http://envisat.esa.int/workshops/acve2/papers/EPOMIGB.pdf

ABSTRACT Temperature soundings of the ALOMAR RMR lidar located in northern Norway at the ALOMAR research facility (69.3 • N, 16.0 • E) close to the Andøya Rocket Range were compared to MIPAS/4.61 temperature data. 35 out of 350 lidar soundings performed on routine basis from July 2002 to March 2004 are compared to 105 available MIPAS data products. The lidar soundings were restricted to time periods ± 1 h about coincident MIPAS soundings (<1000 km). The MIPAS tangent point distance to the lidar site of the selected data was 130 to 993 km. We observed an accuracy of 0.4 K for all available comparisons. For a reduced set of soundings closer than 500 km we observed an accuracy of 0.2 K. In both cases the precision was ∼5 K. Systematic differences where observed at stratopause altitudes which could follow from the restricted MIPAS products available. INTRODUCTION The ESA environmental satellite ENVISAT carries three instruments which observe the Earth's atmosphere. One of them is the Michelson interferometer MIPAS which probes the thermal emissions from the Earth's limb. The MIPAS measurements are converted to atmospheric pressure, temperature, and the concentrations of many trace gases. A description of the instrument can be found in Fischer and Oelhaf [1996]. Before launch it was estimated that MIPAS temperatures will have an accuracy of 2 K and a precision of 1 K. To verify the fidelity of the temperature derived by complex inversion algorithms from real MIPAS measurements, coincident soundings with a Rayleigh/Mie/Raman lidar where analyzed. For this purpose we used measurements performed with the ALOMAR RMR-lidar. For the validation period we received 730 MIPAS profiles of air temperature, processed with the software MIPAS/4.61 for tangent points close to ALOMAR with distances between the tangent point and the lidar of 129 km to 993 km. Among these 730 temperature profiles obtained by MIPAS we found 105 coincident lidar measurements with the ALOMAR RMR-lidar (± 1 hour). LIDAR EXPERIMENT The ALOMAR ...