New SMILES retrievals of ozone in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere region

Ozone in mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region has been observed from space since three decades. We examine ozone in MLT region using observations from the Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES) on the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) of the International Space Station (ISS) between 12 October 2009 and 21 April 2010. We develop a new retrieval to improve upon previous ozone products, especially in the ozone secondary layer. One of the improvements in our new SMILES NICT level 2 product version 3.1.0 is that the profiles of the background atmosphere (altitude, pressure, and temperature) were calculated based on the global model GAIA (Ground-to-topside model of Atmosphere and Ionosphere for Aeronomy) to ensure the internal consistency of these profiles. We assess the quality of the new SMILES NICT Level2 product version 3.1.0 in the MLT region, by comparing with various satellite observations (such as SABER, GOMOS) and model calculations performed using the same background atmosphere as calculated from GAIA at the each observation point. This is to avoid that differences of ozone amount in the same air mass being caused by the use of different atmospheric conditions for calculation of volume mixing ratio from ozone density. We examine the differences caused by the vertical resolution, as well as random errors and systematic errors. The new SMILES ozone product shows good agreement with observations from other satellites in the MLT region. It sheds some light on the seasonal evolution of ozone at low latitudes, as influenced by tides.