Nadir near-UV measurements are used routinely to derive aerosol optical depth and single scattering albedo of desert dust and carbonaceous aerosols. Accurate retrieval of these parameters, however, requires aerosol layer height (ALH) information. Over dark vegetated-land and water surfaces, ALH can be retrieved using Oxygen A and B band observations from sensors equipped with those...
The processing of limb radiance observations is a difficult task due to the complexity of the forward model where several interfering species may interfere within multiple orders of scattering in the radiative transfer model. Furthermore, the observation geometry influences the observed radiance through the air masses, phase function and polarization.
In general, the inversion of limb...
Stratospheric aerosols largely affect the radiative budget of the Earth’s atmosphere by scattering the incident solar radiation back to the space in the UV-Vis-NIR spectral range and by absorbing the radiation upwelling from the troposphere in the thermal infrared spectral range. Furthermore, stratospheric aerosols provide surface for heterogeneous reactions releasing halogenated compounds,...
The Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI) is a multi-spectral polarimetric imager designed to observe scattered sun light in the limb. ALI collects images in a narrow spectral band in one of two orthogonal polarization states for the purpose of retrieving aerosol number density and particle size information within the upper-troposphere lower-stratosphere. Of novelty is the polarimetric nature of the...
Retrieval artifacts from 1D limb retrievals, which assume homogeneous atmospheric properties along the satellite line of sight (LOS), are known but generally associated with variations in the trace gas concentration or temperature. The focus of this study is the investigation of a retrieval artifact identified in tropospheric ozone data and ozone limb profiles retrieved from OMPS-LP...
In this study we demonstrate how neural network (NN) models can be used to improve our understanding of OMPS LP measurements, optimize forward modeling, and enhance OMPS LP retrievals. Retrieving atmospheric profiles from limb observations requires modeling how solar light scatters through the atmosphere. Operational retrieval codes make approximations for computationally expensive processes...