Publication Date:
2015-04-28
Description:
The main purpose of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center TROPospheric OZone DIfferential Absorption Lidar (GSFC TROPOZ DIAL) is to measure the vertical distribution of tropospheric ozone for science investigations. Because of the important health and climate impacts of tropospheric ozone, it is imperative to quantify background photochemical and aloft ozone concentrations, especially during air quality episodes. To better characterize tropospheric ozone, the Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet) has recently been developed, which currently consists of five different ozone DIAL instruments, including the TROPOZ. This paper addresses the necessary procedures to validate the TROPOZ retrieval algorithm and develops a primary standard for retrieval consistency and optimization within TOLNet. This paper is focused on ensuring the TROPOZ and future TOLNet algorithms are properly quantifying ozone concentrations and the following paper will focus on defining a systematic uncertainty analysis standard for all TOLNet instruments. Although this paper is used to optimize the TROPOZ retrieval, the methodology presented may be extended and applied to most other DIAL instruments, even if the atmospheric product of interest is not tropospheric ozone (e.g. temperature or water vapor). The analysis begins by computing synthetic lidar returns from actual TROPOZ lidar return signals in combination with a known ozone profile. From these synthetic signals, it is possible to explicitly determine retrieval algorithm biases from the known profile, thereby identifying any areas that may need refinement for a new operational version of the TROPOZ retrieval algorithm. A new vertical resolution scheme is presented, which was upgraded from a constant vertical resolution to a variable vertical resolution, in order to yield a statistical uncertainty of
Electronic ISSN:
1867-8610
Topics:
Geosciences
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