Validation of formaldehyde products from three satellite retrievals (OMI SAO, OMPS-NPP SAO, and OMI BIRA) in the marine atmosphere with four seasons of Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) aircraft observations

Liao, Jin; Wolfe, Glenn M.; Kotsakis, Alexander E.; Nicely, Julie M.; St. Clair, Jason M.; Hanisco, Thomas F.; González Abad, Gonzalo; Nowlan, Caroline R.; Ayazpour, Zolal; De Smedt, Isabelle; Apel, Eric C.; Hornbrook, Rebecca S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-1-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-1-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-1-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 1

Research article

|

03 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 03 Jan 2025

Validation of formaldehyde products from three satellite retrievals (OMI SAO, OMPS-NPP SAO, and OMI BIRA) in the marine atmosphere with four seasons of Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) aircraft observations

Jin Liao, Glenn M. Wolfe, Alexander E. Kotsakis, Julie M. Nicely, Jason M. St. Clair, Thomas F. Hanisco, Gonzalo González Abad, Caroline R. Nowlan, Zolal Ayazpour, Isabelle De Smedt, Eric C. Apel, and Rebecca S. Hornbrook

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-1-2025-supplement

Data sets

The NASA ATom data S. C. Wofsy et al. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1925

OMPS SAO data Gonzalo Gonzalez Abad https://doi.org/10.5067/IIM1GHT07QA8

OMI BIRA data De Smedt et al. https://doi.org/10.18758/71021031

Short summary

Validation of satellite HCHO over the remote marine regions is relatively low, and modeled HCHO in these regions is usually added as a global satellite HCHO background. This paper intercompares three satellite HCHO retrievals and validates them against in situ observations from the NASA ATom mission. All retrievals are correlated with ATom-integrated columns over remote oceans, with OMI SAO (v004) showing the best agreement. A persistent low bias is found in all retrievals at high latitudes.