Trace Gas Validation and Quality Assessment System for Atmospheric Sensors on METOP
Pinardi, Gaia¹; Van Roozendael, Michel¹; Lambert, Jean-Christopher¹; Granville, José¹; De Mazière, Martine¹; De Backer, Hugo²; Delcloo, Andy²; De Smedt, Isabelle¹; Hendrick, François¹; Yu, Huan¹; Wang, Ting³; Lerot, Christophe¹; Theys, Nicolas¹; van Gent, Jeroen¹; Tack, Frederik¹; Gielen, Clio^1
1BIRA-IASB, BELGIUM; ²RMI, BELGIUM; ³IAP, CHINA

As part of the EUMETSAT’s Satellite Application Facility on Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring (O3M-SAF), BIRA-IASB has been responsible for the validation and Quality Assessment (QA) of a number of trace gases products. For the second phase of the Continuous Development and Operations Project (CDOP-2) a new Trace Gas Validation and Quality Assessment (TGV-QA) web-portal has been set-up, which aims at providing in near-real-time complete information on the status of the operational data products from GOME-2 and IASI on the successive Metop platforms.

The current version of the TGV-QA portal (www.cdop.aeronomie.be) is operational for NO2, BrO and H2CO total and tropospheric column measurements of GOME-2/Metop-A and it is being extended for Metop-B results. For the current phase of the CDOP project (until 2017), the system will be developed to cover a number of additional gases measured by the GOME-2 and IASI sensors (NO2, BrO, H2CO, SO2, glyoxal, HNO3 and OClO) on board of the three EUMETSAT MetOp platforms.

The validation approach is based on an end-to-end methodology where individual components of the level-1-to-2 retrieval chain are addressed. Evaluations are carried out using a suite of correlative observations performed by complementary ground-based remote sensing instruments (zenith-sky and direct sun DOAS, MAXDOAS, and FTIR from selected NDACC stations) and satellite instruments (GOME, SCIAMACHY and OMI) supported by radiative transfer and chemical-transport modelling tools.

We present a demonstration of the system and focus on selected regions where correlative ground-based measurements are currently available, with a particular emphasis on the MAXDOAS stations operated by BIRA-IASB at Observatoire de Haute Provence in South of France, Beijing/Xianghe in China, Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps and Uccle in Belgium.