Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions
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10.5194/acpd-7-1785-2007
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/1785/2007/
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/1785/2007/acpd-7-1785-2007.html
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/1785/2007/acpd-7-1785-2007.pdf
1785
1821
2007-02-05
Simulation study of the aerosol information content in OMI spectral reflectance measurements
B. Veihelmann
ben.veihelmann@knmi.nl
P. F. Levelt
P. Stammes
J. P. Veefkind
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), P.O. Box 201, 3730 AE De Bilt, The Netherlands
The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) is designed and used primarily to
retrieve trace gases like O<sub>3</sub> and NO<sub>2</sub> from the measured Earth
reflectance spectrum in the UV-visible (270–500 nm). However, also
aerosols are an important science target of OMI. Therefore, a Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) is performed to quantify the information content of
OMI reflectance measurements on aerosols. This analysis is applied to
synthetic reflectance measurements for desert dust, biomass burning
aerosols, and weakly absorbing anthropogenic aerosol with a variety of
aerosol optical thicknesses, aerosol layer altitudes, refractive indices and
size distributions. The range of aerosol parameters considered covers the
natural variability of tropospheric aerosols. This theoretical analysis is
performed for a large number of scenarios with various geometries and
surface albedo spectra for ocean, soil and vegetation. When the surface
albedo spectrum is accurately known and clouds are absent, OMI reflectance
measurements have 2 to 4 degrees of freedom that can be attributed to
aerosol parameters. This information content depends on the observation
geometry, the surface albedo spectrum, and on the aerosol parameters
themselves. An additional wavelength band is evaluated, that comprises the
O<sub>2</sub>-O<sub>2</sub> absorption band at a wavelength of 477 nm. It is found that
this wavelength band adds significantly more information than any other
individual band. The PCA is applied to assess the capability of the aerosol
retrieval to discern various aerosol types as well as clouds.
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