Status Report on Evaluation of OMPS SDR

The Ozone Mapper Profiler Suite (OMPS) is a new generation of satellite instrument. The first OMPS was successfully launched in October 2011 onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. After a series of post-launch verification and validation, it will join the previous (TOMS) and current (SBUV/2, OMI, GOME-2, SCIAMACHY) satellite instruments to continue monitoring the global distribution of stratospheric ozone in time and space. OMPS is consisted of three separate sensors, including the Nadir Mapper, the Nadir Profiler, and the Limb Profiler. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for the product generation from the two nadir instruments. Since launch, NOAA has led the OMPS Sensor Data Record (SDR) Team to conduct an Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) of the OMPS nadir instruments. Part of the IV&V is to verify that the instrument performance as established during pre-launch tests has been successfully transferred to orbit; this will be reported in a companion paper. Another part of the IV&V is to validate the quality of OMPS SDR; this will be reported in this paper. The IV&V will establish baselines for instrument performance and data quality, which will be continuously monitored by the Integrated Calibration and Validation System (ICVS) at the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) of NOAA.