[1] In this paper we present validation results of the total ozone column data products of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on board the NASA EOS-AURA satellite through comparisons with ground-based observations by Dobson and Brewer spectrophotometer instruments. Quality-controlled and archived total ozone column data from these ground-based instruments located at stations worldwide have been used to validate more than 2 a of total ozone column observations from OMI. There are two operationally available satellite total ozone column data products, based on the OMI-TOMS and the OMI-DOAS retrieval algorithms, respectively. Validation with ground-based data focused on global comparisons and seasonal dependence and the possible dependence on latitude and solar zenith angle. Our results show a globally averaged agreement of better than 1% for OMI-TOMS data and better than 2% for OMI-DOAS data with the ground-based observations. The OMI-TOMS data product is shown to be of high overall quality with no significant dependence on solar zenith angle or latitude. The OMI-DOAS data product shows no significant dependence on latitude except for the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere where it systematically overestimates the total ozone value. In addition a significant dependence on solar zenith angle is found between OMI-DOAS and ground-based data. Comparisons of satellite and ground-based data tend to show a marginal seasonal dependence even though it remains unclear whether this dependence originates from the ground-based or spaceborne observations.

Abstract. Air quality observations by satellite instruments are global and have a regular temporal resolution, which makes them very useful in studying long-term trends in atmospheric species. To monitor air quality trends in China for the period 2005-2015, we derive SO 2 columns and NO x emissions on a provincial level with improved accuracy. To put these trends into perspective they are compared with public data on energy consumption and the environmental policies of China. We distinguish the effect of air quality regulations from economic growth by comparing them relatively to fossil fuel consumption. Pollutant levels, per unit of fossil fuel, are used to assess the effectiveness of air quality regulations. We note that the desulfurization regulations enforced in 2005-2006 only had a significant effect in the years 2008-2009, when a much stricter control of the actual use of the installations began. For national NO x emissions a distinct decreasing trend is only visible from 2012 onwards, but the emission peak year differs from province to province. Unlike SO 2 , emissions of NO x are highly related to traffic. Furthermore, regulations for NO x emissions are partly decided on a provincial level. The last 3 years show a reduction both in SO 2 and NO x emissions per fossil fuel unit, since the authorities have implemented several new environmental regulations. Despite an increasing fossil fuel consumption and a growing transport sector, the effects of air quality policy in China are clearly visible. Without the air quality regulations the concentration of SO 2 would be about 2.5 times higher and the NO 2 concentrations would be at least 25 % higher than they are today in China.

The Global Ozone Monitoring Instrument (GOME‐2) was launched on EUMESAT's MetOp‐A satellite in October 2006. This paper is concerned with the retrieval algorithm GOME Data Processor (GDP) version 4.4 used by the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring (O3M‐SAF) for the operational generation of GOME‐2 total ozone products. GDP 4.4 is the latest version of the GDP 4.0 algorithm, which is employed for the generation of official Level 2 total ozone and other trace gas products from GOME and SCIAMACHY. Here we focus on enhancements introduced in GDP 4.4: improved cloud retrieval algorithms including detection of Sun glint effects, a correction for intracloud ozone, better treatment of snow and ice conditions, accurate radiative transfer modeling for large viewing angles, and elimination of scan angle dependencies inherited from Level 1 radiances. Furthermore, the first global validation results for 3 years (2007–2009) of GOME‐2/MetOp‐A total ozone measurements using Brewer and Dobson measurements as references are presented. The GOME‐2/MetOp‐A total ozone data obtained with GDP 4.4 slightly underestimates ground‐based ozone by about 0.5% to 1% over the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and slightly overestimates by around 0.5% over the middle latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. Over high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, GOME‐2 total ozone has almost no offset relative to Dobson readings, while over high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere GOME‐2 exhibits a small negative bias below 1%. For tropical latitudes, GOME‐2 measures on average lower ozone by 0% to 2% compared to Dobson measurements.

Abstract. Tropospheric vertical column densities (VCDs) of NO 2 , SO 2 and HCHO derived from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on AURA and the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 aboard METOP-A (GOME-2A) and METOP-B (GOME-2B) are widely used to characterize the global distributions, trends and dominating sources of these trace gases. They are also useful for the comparison with chemical transport models (CTMs). We use tropospheric VCDs and vertical profiles of NO 2 , SO 2 and HCHO derived from MAX-DOAS measurements from 2011 to 2014 in Wuxi, China, to validate the corresponding products (daily and bi-monthly-averaged data) derived from OMI and GOME-2A/B by different scientific teams. Prior to the comparison, the spatial and temporal coincidence criteria for MAX-DOAS and satellite data are determined by a sensitivity study using different spatial and temporal averaging conditions. Cloud effects on both MAX-DOAS and satellite observations are also investigated. Our results indicate that the discrepancies between satellite and MAX-DOAS results increase with increasing effective cloud fraction and are dominated by the effects of clouds on the satellite products. In comparison with MAX-DOAS, we found a systematic underestimation of all SO 2 (40 to 57 %) and HCHO products (about 20 %), and an overestimation of the GOME-2A/B NO 2 products (about 30 %), but good consistency with the DOMINO version 2 NO 2 product. To better understand the reasons for these differences, we evaluated the a priori profile shapes used in the OMI retrievals (derived from CTM) by comparison with those derived from the MAX-DOAS observations. Significant differences are found for the SO 2 and HCHO profile shapes derived from the IMAGES model, whereas on average good agreement is found for the NO 2 profile shapes derived from the TM4 model. We also applied the MAX-DOAS profile shapes to the satellite rePublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 5008 Y. Wang et al.: Validation of OMI, GOME-2A and GOME-2B tropospheric NO 2 , SO 2 and HCHO products trievals and found that these modified satellite VCDs agree better with the MAX-DOAS VCDs than the VCDs from the original data sets by up to 10, 47 and 35 % for NO 2 , SO 2 and HCHO, respectively. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of aerosols on the satellite retrievals. For OMI observations of NO 2 , a systematic underestimation is found for large AOD, which is mainly attributed to effect of the aerosols on the cloud retrieval and the subsequent application of a cloud correction scheme (implicit aerosol correction). In contrast, the effect of aerosols on the clear-sky air mass factor (explicit aerosol correction) has a smaller effect. For SO 2 and HCHO observations selected in the same way, no clear aerosol effect is found, probably because for the considered data sets no cloud correction is applied (and also because of the larger scatter). From our findings we conclude that for satellite observations with cloud top pressure (CTP) > 900 hPa and effective ...

Abstract. The influence of smoke on the aerosol loading in the free troposphere over Thessaloniki, Greece is examined in this paper. Ten cases during 2001-2005 were identified when very high aerosol optical depth values in the free troposphere were observed with a UV-Raman lidar. Particle dispersion modeling (FLEXPART) and satellite hot spot fire detection (ATSR) showed that these high free tropospheric aerosol optical depths are mainly attributed to the advection of smoke plumes from biomass burning regions over Thessaloniki. The biomass burning regions were found to extend across Russia in the latitudinal belt between 45 • N-55 • N, as well as in Eastern Europe (Baltic countries, Western Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine). The highest frequency of agricultural fires occurred during the summer season (mainly in August). The data collected allowed the optical characterization of the smoke aerosols that arrived over Greece, where limited information has so far been available. Two-wavelength backscatter lidar measurements showed that the backscatterrelatedÅngström exponent ranged between 0.5 and 2.4 indicating a variety of particle sizes. UV-Raman lidar measurements showed that for smoke particles the extinction to backscatter ratios (so-called lidar ratios) varied between 40 sr for small particles to 100 sr for large particles. Dispersion model estimations of the carbon monoxide tracer concentration profiles for smoke particles indicate that the variability of the optical parameters is a function of the age of the smoke Correspondence to: V. Amiridis (vamoir@space.noa.gr) plumes. This information could be useful on the lidar community for reducing uncertainty in the aerosol backscatter coefficient determination due to the lidar ratio assumption, starting from a simply elastic backscatter lidar as the first satellite-borne lidar CALIPSO.

Within the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative, total ozone column records from GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment), SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY), and GOME-2 have been reprocessed with GODFIT version 3 (GOME-type Direct FITting). This algorithm is based on the direct fitting of reflectances simulated in the Huggins bands to the observations. We report on new developments in the algorithm from the version implemented in the operational GOME Data Processor v5. The a priori ozone profile database TOMSv8 is now combined with a recently compiled OMI/MLS tropospheric ozone climatology to improve the representativeness of a priori information. The Ring procedure that corrects simulated radiances for the rotational Raman inelastic scattering signature has been improved using a revised semi-empirical expression. Correction factors are also applied to the simulated spectra to account for atmospheric polarization. In addition, the computational performance has been significantly enhanced through the implementation of new radiative transfer tools based on principal component analysis of the optical properties. Furthermore, a soft-calibration scheme for measured reflectances and based on selected Brewer measurements has been developed in order to reduce the impact of level-1 errors. This soft-calibration corrects not only for possible biases in backscattered reflectances, but also for artificial spectral features interfering with the ozone signature. Intersensor comparisons and ground-based validation indicate that these ozone data sets are of unprecedented quality, with stability better than 1% per decade, a precision of 1.7%, and systematic uncertainties less than 3.6% over a wide range of atmospheric states.

Abstract. Sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) is an important atmospheric constituent that plays a crucial role in many atmospheric processes. Volcanic eruptions are a significant source of atmospheric SO 2 and its effects and lifetime depend on the SO 2 injection altitude. The Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on the METOP satellite can be used to study volcanic emission of SO 2 using high-spectral resolution measurements from 1000 to 1200 and from 1300 to 1410 cm −1 (the 7.3 and 8.7 µm SO 2 bands) returning both SO 2 amount and altitude data. The scheme described in Carboni et al. (2012) has been applied to measure volcanic SO 2 amount and altitude for 14 explosive eruptions from 2008 to 2012. The work includes a comparison with the following independent measurements: (i) the SO 2 column amounts from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull plumes have been compared with Brewer ground measurements over Europe; (ii) the SO 2 plumes heights, for the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull and 2011 Grimsvötn eruptions, have been compared with CALIPSO backscatter profiles. The results of the comparisons show that IASI SO 2 measurements are not affected by underlying cloud and are consistent (within the retrieved errors) with the other measurements. The series of analysed eruptions (2008 to 2012) show that the biggest emitter of volcanic SO 2 was Nabro, followed by Kasatochi and Grímsvötn. Our observations also show a tendency for volcanic SO 2 to reach the level of the tropopause during many of the moderately explosive eruptions observed. For the eruptions observed, this tendency was independent of the maximum amount of SO 2 (e.g. 0.2 Tg for Dalafilla compared with 1.6 Tg for Nabro) and of the volcanic explosive index (between 3 and 5).

[1] We present water vapor profiles obtained from infrared limb emission measurements recorded by the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) on board the European Environmental Satellite (Envisat). These retrievals are based on constrained nonlinear least squares fitting. The retrievals are very sensitive to the radiative signals of thin transparent clouds and measurements showing any signature of cloud contamination have been rigorously excluded. The vertical resolution of the retrieved water vapor profiles is 4.5 to 6.5 km up to an altitude of approximately 42 km. The resulting total error of the retrieved water vapor profiles, including measurement noise, systematic and random parameter uncertainties like interfering species or preretrieved temperature or spectroscopic data, is in the range of 6 to 9% in the stratosphere. Towards the tropopause, the error increases up to 30% due to the exponential gradient of the tropospheric water vapor profile, where small line of sight uncertainties lead to strong absolute variations in the water vapor profile below the hygropause. Averaged water vapor distributions obtained from measurements taken during 11 days in June, July, and August 2003 show the expected distributions with low water vapor volume mixing ratios (VMRs) above the tropopause, comparatively dry air inside the tropical stratospheric updraft region and indications for strong dehydration above the Antarctic continent inside the polar vortex. Additionally, in the transition from tropics to subtropics, a latitude band was observed where, in higher altitudes, large water vapor VMRs were measured compared to adjacent tropical and midlatitudinal regions. Especially over the Arabic peninsula, a moist region at 18 km altitude was observed, which was probably related to the South Asian monsoon circulation.