Publication Date:
2014-09-18
Description:
The main goal of this article is to validate the total water vapour column (TWVC) measured by the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) satellite sensor and generated using the GOME Data Processor (GDP) retrieval algorithm developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). For this purpose, spatially and temporally collocated TWVC data from highly accurate sounding measurements for the period January 2009–May 2014 at six sites are used. These balloon-borne data are provided by GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN). The correlation between GOME-2 and sounding TWVC data is reasonably good (determination coefficient (R2) of 0.89) when all available radiosondes (1400) are employed in the inter-comparison. When cloud-free cases (544) are selected by means of the satellite cloud fraction (CF), the correlation exhibits a remarkable improvement (R2 ~ 0.95). Nevertheless, analyzing the six datasets together, the relative differences between GOME-2 and GRUAN data shows mean values (in absolute term) of 19% for all-sky conditions and 14% for cloud-free cases, which evidences a notable bias in the satellite TWVC data against the reference balloon-borne measurements. The satellite-sounding TWVC differences show a strong solar zenith angle (SZA) dependence for values above 50° with a stable behaviour for values below this zenith angle. The smallest relative differences found in the inter-comparison (between −5 and +3%) are achieved for those cloud-free cases with SZA below 50°. Furthermore, the detailed analysis of the influence of cloud properties (CF, cloud top albedo (CTA) and cloud top pressure (CTP)) on the satellite-sounding differences reveals, as expected, a large effect of clouds in the GOME-2 TWVC data. For instance, the relative differences exhibit a large negative dependence on CTA, varying from +5 to −20% when CTA rises from 0.3 to 0.9. Finally, the satellite-sounding differences also show a negative dependence on the reference TWVC values, changing from +10% (TWVC below 10 mm) to −20% (TWVC above 50 mm).
Electronic ISSN:
1867-8610
Topics:
Geosciences
Permalink