Evaluating co-located Pandora systems with an outlook for TEMPO validation
Abstract
The launch of the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO) satellite, slated for 2021, will provide atmospheric observations critical for improving air quality monitoring. A concerted effort is thus needed to validate TEMPO data prior to its utilization. Pandora spectrometer systems, one of the ground-based tools used to validate similar satellite missions, measures key constituents in ultraviolet-visible wavelengths such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and formaldehyde at a high spatiotemporal resolution. Pandora systems deployed across the TEMPO field of regard are in an ideal position to validate geostationary measurements. In anticipation of TEMPO validation activities, evaluation of Pandora measurement accuracy and consistency is needed. Pandora systems co-located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel during the OWLETS 2017 campaign are inter-compared using cloud-filtered data to analyze their relative performance. Additional comparisons are made using remote-sensing and in-situ columnar datasets from other platforms in the region. These platforms include OMI, Brewer, tropospheric ozone lidar, as well as ozonesondes. Additionally, temporal performance and potential biases of these instruments are evaluated pre-, per-, and post- laboratory and field calibrations. We find system performance is consistent once accounting for biases. The systems correlate well with one another with respect to columnar ozone measurements, illustrated by several days when the average percent differences between all co-located systems is under 5%. Additionally, the systems are found to track closely with MERRA-2 ozone reanalysis, exhibiting similar features when graphed together.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.A51N2387R
- Keywords:
-
- 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 3307 Boundary layer processes;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3355 Regional modeling;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES