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| Titel |
Vertical information content of nadir measurements of tropospheric NO2 from satellite |
| VerfasserIn |
Andreas Hilboll, Andreas Richter, John P. Burrows |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2014
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 16 (2014) |
| Datensatznummer |
250088738
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2014-2882.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| When applying satellite measurements in atmospheric pollution research, one commonly
used species are tropospheric NO2 columns. They can be useful for the identification and
evaluation of natural and anthropogenic NOx emissions and their changes over time
as well as for process studies and for the investigation of atmospheric transport
events.
However, the lack of vertical resolution is one major limitation of the commonly used
DOAS retrievals of NO2 columns from satellite observed radiances. Combined with the
altitude-dependence of retrieval sensitivity, this entails the use of a priori information on the
NO2 vertical profile. This significantly contributes to the retrieval uncertainties, which could
be reduced if information on the vertical location of the NO2 could be retrieved from the
measurements themselves.
In this study, we investigate the vertical information content of nadir NO2 observations in
the UV/visible wavelength range. For this purpose, we revisit the vertical sensitivity of DOAS
retrievals of NO2, which is encoded in the averaging kernels, and contrast these findings with
the results from a formal solution to the inverse radiative transfer problem, using synthetic
spectra representing measurements over polluted regions. As a result, we can show that in
certain cases, it is indeed possible to derive information on the vertical distribution of NO2
from the DOAS analysis alone, reducing the dependence of the retrievals on a priori
information in these situations. |
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