OMB Individually Reported

Retrieving stratospheric NO2 profiles from OMPS Limb Profiler measurements

Low riskExact public inventory row

Description

Stratospheric NO2 plays an important role in ozone photochemistry. The OMPS Limb Profiler (LP) instrument provides daily near-global coverage; it is currently operating on two satellites and is planned for two additional platforms in the coming years. However, LP is only weakly sensitive to NO2 due to coarse spectral resolution at wavelengths where NO2 absorbs, which prohibits the use of traditional retrieval techniques.

Detailed example

Prediction of NO2 profiles between 10.5 - 45.5 km

AI / analytics pattern

Classical/Predictive Machine Learning: Models trained on data to make predictions or classifications based on identified patterns or relationships.

Automation level / stage

b) Pilot – The use case has been deployed in a limited test or pilot capacity.

Expected benefit

Additional observations of stratospheric NO2 abundances can improve our understanding of stratospheric chemistry and dynamics. Validation of this work is complicated due to limited availability of observations, but the retrieved profiles show good agreement with state-of-the-art model simulations and the retrieved integrated column shows good agreement with space-borne measurements from Aura OMI.

Controls / human review

ATO: Yes; PIA: Not published

Data needed

1. OMPS LP Level-1 gridded radiance data product at selected wavelengths 2. Atmospheric temperature and pressure profiles from the NASA Global Earth Observing System (GEOS) Forward Processing for Instrument Teams product 3. NO2 profiles from the GEOS Climate Chemistry Model matched to local solar time of OMPS LP observations