Validation of OMPS LP Ozone Profiles Version 2.0 with MLS, Ozone Sondes and Lidar Measurements

The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) on board Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) was launched on October 28, 2011. It consist of three instruments: Nadir Mapper (NM), Nadir Profiler (NP) and Limb Profiler (LP). The OMPS LP instrument is designed to provide high vertical resolution ozone profiles from measurements of the scattered solar radiation in the 290-1000 nm spectral range. It collected its first Earth limb measurement in January 10, 2012, and continues to provide daily global measurements of ozone profiles from the cloud top up to 60 km. This presentation will describe the recent changes implemented for the OMPS LP V2.0 ozone product and discuss the results of comparisons with co-located measurements from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), and from ozone sondes and lidar measurements. In general, the agreement with MLS is within 5% over an altitude range of 20-40 km. Above 40 km, the difference is ~10% in the southern and northern hemispheres. In the lower stratosphere above the tropopause, the lack of aerosol corrections is evident, where OMPS is 5-10% smaller than MLS in the tropics and northern hemisphere. The difference is smaller in the southern hemisphere, where the retrieval algorithm is less sensitive to aerosol due to the large single-scattering angle and small aerosol scattering phase function.