A study of the approaches used to retrieve aerosol extinction, as applied to limb observations made by OSIRIS and SCIAMACHY

Rieger, Landon A.; Malinina, Elizaveta P.; Rozanov, Alexei V.; Burrows, John P.; Bourassa, Adam E.; Degenstein, Doug A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-3433-2018

Articles | Volume 11, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-3433-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-3433-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 6

Research article

|

15 Jun 2018

Research article |

| 15 Jun 2018

A study of the approaches used to retrieve aerosol extinction, as applied to limb observations made by OSIRIS and SCIAMACHY

Landon A. Rieger, Elizaveta P. Malinina, Alexei V. Rozanov, John P. Burrows, Adam E. Bourassa, and Doug A. Degenstein

Data sets

SASKTRAN D. J. Zawada, A. E. Bourassa, N. D. Lloyd, C. Z. Roth, and D. A. Degenstein https://arg.usask.ca/docs/sasktran/

SCIATRAN radiative transfer model and retrieval software A. Rozanov, V. Rozanov, and J. P. Burrows http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/sciatran/

Stratospheric aerosol extinction coefficient E. Malinina, A. Rozanov, M. Vountas, and J. Burrows http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/scia-arc/

Short summary

This paper compares aerosol extinction records from two limb scattering instruments, OSIRIS and SCIAMACHY, to that from the occultation instrument SAGE II. Differences are investigated through modelling and retrieval studies and important sources of systematic errors are quantified. It is found that the largest biases come from uncertainties in the aerosol size distribution and the aerosol particle concentration at altitudes above 30 km.