Improvements to Ozone measurements Expected from the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite for Weather and Climate

Past and present research missions have demonstrated that a wealth of information on ozone can be obtained from observations. s. The use of these observations, however, has been mainly confined to directed scientific studies as opposed to operational applications; long-term monitoring of ozone (and other trace gases) and aerosol trends being an exception. This talk will describe the improvements expected from the operational OMPS profile suite products and explore potential weather and climate applications. The OMPS suite derives from a long heritage of extensively validated UV sensors flown on several successful satellite missions. It consists of three sensors designed to operate synergistically: The Nadir sensors (Nadir profiler NP and Total Column TC) determine the nadir Ozone profile and the Total Column Ozone. The Limb Profiler (LP), an experimental limb viewing sensor, measures the ozone profiles with a finer vertical resolution. The OMPS TC design is based on NASA's heritage TOMS system and also draws from close heritage cousins GOME, on board the second European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-2) and OMI, flown on EOS Aura sensors. One of the main improvements of the OMPS TCover the heritage systems comes from the use of co-located external data, e.g. snow/ice and temperature profile provided by other NPP/JPSS sensors VIIRS and CrIS. Additional enhancements are made possible by the OMPS TC CCDs detectors that offer a continuous coverage from 300 nm – 380 nm with a spectral resolution of 1 nm whereas the TOMS detectors are photomultipliers that allow only a discrete range of wavelengths between 250 and 360 nm. The OMPS TC product algorithms are able to make use of the OMPS sensor characteristics and operational design. For example, sample tables are used for processing and uploaded to the s/c to correct for bad pixels, pixel to pixel inhomogeneities and nonlinearities. The improved design and algorithm enhancements will allow the OMPS TC to satisfy the OMPS EDR requirements with margin and match or slightly exceed heritage TOMS performance. The OMPS Nadir Profile is designed to provide continuity for the heritage measurements from BUV, SBUV and SBUV/2. However, the instrument also provides improvements over the heritage due to its capability of provide hyperspectral coverage for wavelengths in the range between 250 nm to 310 nm with 1 nm band pass. The NP spectrometer is integrated with the TC to provide wavelength coverage (to the 380 nm range) and can provide slightly better SNR than heritage. Its performance is currently expected to match that of heritage instruments, but some of the instrument improvements could be used in the future to obtain a better performance. The limb-viewing measurements will continue the limb scatter profile data set produced by OSIRIS and SCIAMACHY. They can be integrated with the NP and TC to provide improved profile ozone for applications that include those associated with UV index forecast, Ocean Color estimation, Ozone hole monitoring and Boundary Conditions for Air quality forecasts.