Improving of Aura Microwave Limb Sounder Data Products

The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on NASA's Aura satellite began collecting atmospheric data in August of 2004, and the MLS Science Investigator-led Processing System (SIPS) processes the raw data to calibrated radiances and the 20 different geophysical parameters. Currently, SIPS provides two versions (V2 and V3) of these data products, and Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Service Centers (GES-DISC) archives and provides them to the user community. This paper will describe the current plans by the MLS Science Team (MST) to improve the V2 and V3 algorithms, and at the top of the list are how to ameliorate the issue with oscillations in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UT/LS) ozone and improve behavior of UT/LS species in thick cloud. Other improvements include: removing adverse cloud interactions in some products (e.g. CO) that now occur in V3, ideally better still with the new cloud forward model; work to further reduce biases in 640 GHz species; extend species to lower altitude (including potentially those at 190 GHz); consider joint retrievals spanning multiple radiometers (e.g., joint 190/640 GHZ ClO to get methanol independently); better HCN lower down using a separate phase (q.v. 190 GHz goal above); and gain better understanding of hydrostatic / pressure inconsistency in Band 1. This paper will also discuss usability improvement such as TAI93 at 0Z of granule, day boundary discontinuities, and extending the data format to be compatible with NetCDF (network Common Data Form) that supports a machine-independent format for representing scientific data and is widely used in the community.