Aerosol extinction profiles at 525 nm and 1020 nm derived from ACE imager data: comparisons with GOMOS, SAGE II, SAGE III, POAM III, and OSIRIS

[摘要] The Canadian ACE (Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment) mission is dedicated to the retrieval of alarge number of atmospheric trace gas species using the solar occultation technique in theinfrared and UV/visible spectral domain. However, two additional solar disk imagers (at 525 nmand 1020 nm) were added for a number of reasons, including the retrieval of aerosol and cloudproducts. In this paper, we present first comparison results for these imager aerosol/cloudoptical extinction coefficient profiles, with the ones derived from measurements performedby 3 solar occultation instruments (SAGE II, SAGE III, POAM III), one stellaroccultation instrument (GOMOS) and one limb sounder (OSIRIS). The results indicate that the ACE imagerprofiles are of good quality in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, although the aerosol extinctionfor the visible channel at 525 nm contains a significant negative bias at higher altitudes, while the relativedifferences indicate that ACE profiles are almost always too high at 1020 nm. Both problems are probably relatedto ACE imager instrumental issues.

[学科分类] 大气科学