Retrieval of three-dimensional small-scale structures in upper-tropospheric/lower-stratospheric composition as measured by GLORIA

Abstract

Abstract. The three-dimensional quantification of smallscale processes in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere is one of the challenges of current atmospheric research and requires the development of new measurement strategies. This work presents the first results from the newly developed Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere (GLORIA) obtained during the ESSenCe (ESa Sounder Campaign) and TACTS/ESMVal (TACTS: Transport and composition in the upper troposphere/lowermost stratosphere, ESMVal: Earth System Model Validation) aircraft campaigns. The focus of this work is on the so-called dynamics-mode data characterized by a medium-spectral and a very-high-spatial resolution. The retrieval strategy for the derivation of two-and threedimensional constituent fields in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere is presented. Uncertainties of the main retrieval targets (temperature, O 3 , HNO 3 , and CFC-12) and their spatial resolution are discussed. During ESSenCe, highresolution two-dimensional cross-sections have been obtained. Comparisons to collocated remote-sensing and in situ data indicate a good agreement between the data sets. During TACTS/ESMVal, a tomographic flight pattern to sense an intrusion of stratospheric air deep into the troposphere was performed. It was possible to reconstruct this filament at an unprecedented spatial resolution of better than 500 m vertically and 20 × 20 km horizontally.

Transport of Antarctic stratospheric strongly dehydrated air into the troposphere observed during the HALO-ESMVal campaign 2012

“…The gimbal mount and inertial altitude control system allows GLORIA to maintain a steady pointing on a moving aircraft; it can also be used to point the instrument at a range of azimuth angles with respect to the aircraft, covering about 70 • . This allows for tomographic measurement patterns and 3-D reconstruction of fine-scale filamentary structures (Ungermann et al, 2011;Kaufmann et al, 2015). The vertical location of retrieved quantities approximately follows the tangent points of the measurement geometry (parabola curve through the atmosphere).…”

Tomographic reconstruction of atmospheric gravity wave parameters from airglow observations

“…by pointing at one particular region while the instrument is flying by. Such tomographic retrievals have been demonstrated and implemented in a variety of measurements for different purposes, including by Carlotti et al (2001) for Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), Livesey and Read (2000) for MLS, Ungermann et al (2010a) for Process Exploration through Measurements of Infrared and millimetre-wave Emitted Radiation (PREMIER), and Ungermann et al (2011) and Kaufmann et al (2015) for the airborne GLORIA instrument. In this work, we propose to combine satellite-borne limb and sub-limb measurements of a nightglow layer in such a way that we obtain multi-angle observations of a particular air volume as well.…”

“…Utilizing limb soundings, these data sets include temperature or density data acquired by the Limb Infrared Monitor of the Stratosphere (LIMS) Gille, 1994, 1996), the Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) (Tsuda et al, 2000), Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere (CRISTA) (Eckermann and Preusse, 1999), Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) (Ern et al, 2011;Preusse et al, 2009a), High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) (Alexander et al, 2008), and Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere (GLORIA) aircraft (Riese et al, 2014;Kaufmann et al, 2015;Ungermann et al, 2010bUngermann et al, , 2011. GWs can be also characterized by nadir-viewing instruments, such as the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) (Alexander and Barnet, 2007;Hoffmann and Alexander, 2009;Gong et al, 2012;Hoffmann et al, 2016;Ern et al, 2017), and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) (Wu, 2004).…”

Chemical analysis of refractory stratospheric aerosol particles collected within the arctic vortex and inside polar stratospheric clouds

“…The suite of instruments merged within Geophysica during the RECONCILE campaign was the most comprehensive one to date with respect to PSC processes flown on a single aircraft (von Hobe et al, 2013). While the main objective of the ESSenCe (ESA Sounder Campaign) campaign in December 2011 was the in-flight testing of the GLORIA (Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere) instrument and thereby the retrieval of three-dimensional small-scale structures in uppertropospheric/lower-stratospheric composition (Kaufmann et al, 2015), ESSenCe provided a second opportunity to collect stratospheric aerosol under partly comparable conditions to RECONCILE.…”