Stratospheric ozone profiles from the backscattered ultraviolet experiment aboard the satellite EXOS-C

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Stratospheric ozone profiles from the backscattered ultraviolet experiment aboard the satellite EXOS-C

Ogawa, T. / Koike, M. / Suzuki, K.

Abstract The ultraviolet spectrometer aboard the satellite EXOS-C measured the Rayleigh scattering of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation by the terrestrial atmosphere in the wavelength region 250 – 320 nm. The observed spectra were analyzed to infer ozone profiles by means of the linear constrained inversion method with an interative calculation of the inversion matrix and using a reference spectrum for solar UV flux reported in literature. A calibration was made to adjust the spectral sensitivity of the spectrometer with the aid of an ozone profile obtained with a rocket ozonesonde during the satellite overpass. Intercomparisons of the retrieved ozone profiles were made with those from other ground-based observations, proving general agreement within ±10%. Monthly-averaged meridional distributions were constructed using the data for the period March 1984 – September 1987 to compare with those of the interim ozone model for CIRA. The agreement is found to be within ±10% on the average in the height range 20 mb - 1 mb. On the contrary, above the height of the 0.7 mb level, the EXOS-C data are systematically smaller by −20% than the interim CIRA, suggesting a calibration bias. The data accumulated for 3 years reveal a possible drift in the spectral sensitivity of the spectrometer.