ALBERT

Description: GOMOS on ENVISAT (launched in February, 2002) is the first space instrument dedicated to the study of the atmosphere of the Earth by the technique of stellar occultations (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars). Its polar orbit makes good latitude coverage possible. Because it is self-calibrating, it is particularly well adapted to long time trend monitoring of stratospheric species. With 4 spectrometers, the wavelength coverage of 248 nm to 942 nm enables monitoring ozone, H2O, NO2, NO3, air density, aerosol extinction, and O2. Two additional fast photometers (with 1 kHz sampling rate) enable the correction of the effects of scintillations, as well as the study of the structure of air density irregularities resulting from gravity waves and turbulence. A high vertical resolution profile of the temperature may also be obtained from the time delay between the red and the blue photometer. Noctilucent clouds (Polar Mesospheric Clouds, PMC) are routinely observed in both polar summers and global observations of OClO and sodium are achieved. The instrument configuration, dictated by the scientific objectives' rationale and technical constraints, is described, together with the typical operations along one orbit, along with the statistics from over 6 years of operation. Typical atmospheric transmission spectra are presented and some retrieval difficulties are discussed, in particular for O2 and H2O. An overview is presented of a number of scientific results already published or found in more detail as companion papers in the same ACP GOMOS special issue. This paper is particularly intended to provide an incentive for the exploitation of GOMOS data available to the whole scientific community in the ESA data archive, and to help GOMOS data users to better understand the instrument, its capabilities and the quality of its measurements, thus leading to an increase in the scientific return.

Description: GOMOS (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars), on board the European platform ENVISAT launched in 2002, is a stellar occultation instrument combining four spectrometers and two fast photometers which measure light at 1 kHz sampling rate in the two visible channels 470–520 nm and 650–700 nm. On the day side, GOMOS does not measure only the light from the star, but also the solar light scattered by the atmospheric molecules. In the summer polar days, Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMC) are clearly detected using the photometers signals, as the solar light scattered by the cloud particles in the instrument field of view. The sun-synchronous orbit of ENVISAT allows observing PMC in both hemispheres and the stellar occultation technique ensures a very good geometrical registration. Four years of data, from 2002 to 2006, are analyzed up to now. GOMOS data set consists of approximately 10 000 cloud observations all over the eight PMC seasons studied. The first climatology obtained by the analysis of this data set is presented, focusing on the seasonal and latitudinal coverage, represented by global maps. GOMOS photometers allow a very sensitive PMC detection, showing a frequency of occurrence of 100% in polar regions during the middle of the PMC season. According to this work mesospheric clouds seem to be more frequent in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere. The PMC altitude distribution was also calculated. The obtained median values are 82.7 km in the North and 83.2 km in the South.

Description: The middle atmosphere has been affected by an exceptionally strong midwinter stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) during the Arctic winter 2012/2013. These unusual meteorological conditions led to a breakdown of the polar vortex, followed by the reformation of a strong upper stratospheric vortex associated with particularly efficient descent of air. Measurements by the Sub-Millimetre Radiometer (SMR), on board the Odin satellite, show that very large amounts of nitric oxide (NO), produced by Energetic Particle Precipitation (EPP) in the mesosphere/lower thermosphere (MLT), could thus enter the polar stratosphere in early 2013. The mechanism referring to the downward transport of EPP generated-NOx during winter is generally called the EPP indirect effect. SMR observed up to 20 times more NO in the upper stratosphere than the average NO measured at the same latitude, pressure and time during three previous winters where no mixing between mesospheric and stratospheric air was noticeable. This event turned out to be an unprecedently strong case of this effect. Our study is based on a comparison with the Arctic winter 2008/2009, when a similar situation was observed and which was so far considered as a record-breaking winter for this kind of events. This outstanding situation is the result of the combination between a relatively high geomagnetic activity and an unusually high dynamical activity, which makes this case a prime example to study the EPP impacts on the atmospheric composition.

Description: Measurements from 2002–2011 by three independent satellite instruments, namely MIPAS, SABER, and SMR on board the ENVISAT, TIMED, and Odin satellites are used to investigate the inter-annual variability of stratospheric and mesospheric O3 volume mixing ratio (vmr) inside the Antarctic polar vortex due to solar and geomagnetic activity. In this study, we individually analysed the relative O3 vmr variations between maximum and minimum conditions of a number of solar and geomagnetic indices (F10.7 cm solar radio flux, Ap index, ≥ 2 MeV electron flux). The indices are 26 day averages centred at 1 April, 1 May, and 1 June while O3 is based on 26 day running means from 1 April–1 November at altitudes from 20–70 km. During solar quiet time from 2005–2010, the composite of all three instruments reveals an apparent negative O3 feedback associated to the geomagnetic activity (Ap index) around 1 April, on average reaching amplitudes between −5 and −10% of the respective O3 background. The O3 response exceeds the significance level of 95% and propagates downwards throughout the polar winter from the stratopause down to ∼ 25 km. These observed results are in good qualitative agreement with the O3 vmr pattern simulated with a three-dimensional chemistry-transport model, which includes particle impact ionisation.

Description: GOMOS on ENVISAT (launched in February, 2002) is the first space instrument dedicated to the study of the atmosphere of the Earth by the technique of stellar occultations (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars). From a polar orbit, it allows to have a good latitude coverage. Because it is self-calibrated, it is particularly well adapted to the long time trend monitoring of stratospheric species. With 4 spectrometers the wavelength coverage of 248 nm to 942 nm allows to monitor ozone, H2O, NO2, NO3, air, aerosols, and O2. Two additional fast photometers (1 kHz sampling rate) allow for the correction of scintillations, as well as the study of the structure of air density irregularities, resulting from gravity waves and turbulence. A high vertical resolution profile of the temperature may also be obtained from the time delay between the red and the blue photometer. Noctilucent clouds (Polar Mesospheric Clouds, PMC), are routinely observed in both polar summers, and global observations of OCLO and sodium are achieved. The instrument configuration, dictated by the scientific objectives rationale and technical constraints, are described, together with the typical operations along one orbit, and statistics over 5 years of operation. Typical atmospheric transmission spectra are presented, and some retrieval difficulties are discussed, in particular for O2 and H2O. An overview of a number of scientific results is presented, already published or found in more details as companion papers in the same ACP GOMOS special issue. This paper is particularly intended to provide the incentive for GOMOS data exploitation, available to the whole scientific community in the ESA data archive, and to help the GOMOS data users to better understand the instrument, its capabilities and the quality of its measurements, for an optimized scientific return.

Description: We compare the nitric oxide measurements in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (60 to 150 km) from four instruments: the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment–Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS), the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY), and the Sub-Millimetre Radiometer (SMR). We use the daily zonal mean data in that altitude range for the years 2004–2010 (ACE-FTS), 2005–2012 (MIPAS), 2008–2012 (SCIAMACHY), and 2003–2012 (SMR). We first compare the data qualitatively with respect to the morphology, focussing on the major features, and then compare the time series directly and quantitatively. In three geographical regions, we compare the vertical density profiles on coincident measurement days. Since none of the instruments delivers continuous daily measurements in this altitude region, we carried out a multi-linear regression analysis. This regression analysis considers annual and semi-annual variability in the form of harmonic terms and inter-annual variability by responding linearly to the solar Lyman-α radiation index and the geomagnetic Kp index. This analysis helps to find similarities and differences in the individual data sets with respect to the inter-annual variations caused by geomagnetic and solar variability. We find that the data sets are consistent and that they only disagree on minor aspects. SMR and ACE-FTS deliver the longest time series in the mesosphere, and they agree with each other remarkably well. The shorter time series from MIPAS and SCIAMACHY also agree with them where they overlap. The data agree within 30 % when the number densities are large, but they can differ by 50 to 100 % in some cases.

Description: Precipitation of high-energy electrons (EEP) into the polar middle atmosphere is a potential source of significant production of odd nitrogen, which may play a role in stratospheric ozone destruction and in perturbing large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. High-speed streams of solar wind (HSS) are a major source of energization and precipitation of electrons from the Earth's radiation belts, but it remains to be determined whether these electrons make a significant contribution to the odd-nitrogen budget in the middle atmosphere when compared to production by solar protons or by lower-energy (auroral) electrons at higher altitudes, with subsequent downward transport. Satellite observations of EEP are available, but their accuracy is not well established. Studies of the ionization of the atmosphere in response to EEP, in terms of cosmic-noise absorption (CNA), have indicated an unexplained seasonal variation in HSS-related effects and have suggested possible order-of-magnitude underestimates of the EEP fluxes by the satellite observations in some circumstances. Here we use a model of ionization by EEP coupled with an ion chemistry model to show that published average EEP fluxes, during HSS events, from satellite measurements (Meredith et al., 2011), are fully consistent with the published average CNA response (Kavanagh et al., 2012). The seasonal variation of CNA response can be explained by ion chemistry with no need for any seasonal variation in EEP. Average EEP fluxes are used to estimate production rate profiles of nitric oxide between 60 and 100 km heights over Antarctica for a series of unusually well separated HSS events in austral winter 2010. These are compared to observations of changes in nitric oxide during the events, made by the sub-millimetre microwave radiometer on the Odin spacecraft. The observations show strong increases of nitric oxide amounts between 75 and 90 km heights, at all latitudes poleward of 60° S, about 10 days after the arrival of the HSS. These are of the same order of magnitude but generally larger than would be expected from direct production by HSS-associated EEP, indicating that downward transport likely contributes in addition to direct production.

Description: GOMOS (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars), on board the European platform ENVISAT launched in 2002, is a stellar occultation instrument combining four spectrometers and two fast photometers which measure light at 1 kHz sampling rate in the two visible channels 470–520 nm and 650–700 nm. On the day side, GOMOS does not measure only the light from the star, but also the solar light scattered by the atmospheric molecules. In the summer polar days, Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMC) are clearly detected using the photometers signals, as the solar light scattered by the cloud particles in the instrument field of view. The sun-synchronous orbit of ENVISAT allows observing PMC in both hemispheres and the stellar occultation technique ensures a very good geometrical registration. Four years of data, from 2002 to 2006, are analyzed up to now. GOMOS data set consists of approximately 10 000 cloud observations all over the eight PMC seasons studied. The first climatology obtained by the analysis of this data set is presented, focusing on the seasonal and latitudinal coverage, represented by global maps. GOMOS photometers allow a very sensitive PMC detection, showing a frequency of occurrence of 100% in polar regions during the middle of the PMC season. According to this work mesospheric clouds seem to be more frequent in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere. The PMC altitude distribution was also calculated. The obtained median values are 82.7 km in the North and 83.2 km in the South.

Description: We compare the nitric oxide measurements in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (60 to 150 km) from four instruments: ACE-FTS, MIPAS, SCIAMACHY, and SMR. We use the daily zonal mean data in that altitude range for the years 2004–2010 (ACE-FTS), 2005–2012 (MIPAS), 2008–2012 (SCIAMACHY), and 2003–2012 (SMR). We first compare the data qualitatively with respect to the morphology, focussing on the major features, and then compare the time series directly and quantitatively. In three geographical regions, we compare the vertical density profiles on coincident measurement days. Since none of the instruments delivers continuous daily measurements in this altitude region, we carried out a multi-linear regression analysis. This regression analysis considers annual and semi-annual variability in form of harmonic terms and inter-annual variability by responding linearly to the solar Lyman-α radiation index and the geomagnetic Kp index. This analysis helps to find similarities and differences in the individual data sets with respect to the inter-annual variations caused by geomagnetic and solar variability. We find that the data sets are consistent and that they only disagree on minor aspects. SMR and ACE-FTS deliver the longest time series in the mesosphere and they both agree remarkably well. The shorter time series from MIPAS and SCIAMACHY also agree with them where they overlap. The data agree within ten to twenty percent when the number densities are large, but they can differ by 50 to 100% in some cases.

Description: Measurements from 2002 to 2011 by three independent satellite instruments, namely MIPAS, SABER, and SMR on board the ENVISAT, TIMED, and Odin satellites are used to investigate the intra-seasonal variability of stratospheric and mesospheric O3 volume mixing ratio (vmr) inside the Antarctic polar vortex due to solar and geomagnetic activity. In this study, we individually analysed the relative O3 vmr variations between maximum and minimum conditions of a number of solar and geomagnetic indices (F10.7 cm solar radio flux, Ap index, ≥ 2 MeV electron flux). The indices are 26-day averages centred at 1 April, 1 May, and 1 June while O3 is based on 26-day running means from 1 April to 1 November at altitudes from 20 to 70 km. During solar quiet time from 2005 to 2010, the composite of all three instruments reveals an apparent negative O3 signal associated to the geomagnetic activity (Ap index) around 1 April, on average reaching amplitudes between −5 and −10% of the respective O3 background. The O3 response exceeds the significance level of 95% and propagates downwards throughout the polar winter from the stratopause down to ~ 25 km. These observed results are in good qualitative agreement with the O3 vmr pattern simulated with a three-dimensional chemistry-transport model, which includes particle impact ionisation.