Retrieving aerosol height from the oxygen A band: a fast forward operator and sensitivity study concerning spectral resolution, instrumental noise, and surface inhomogeneity

Abstract. Hyperspectral radiance measurements in the oxygen A band are sensitive to the vertical distribution of atmospheric scatterers, which in principle allows the retrieval of aerosol height from future instruments like TROPOMI, OCO2, FLEX, and CarbonSat. Discussed in this paper is a fast and flexible forward operator for the simulation of hyperspectral radiances in the oxygen A band and, based on this scheme, a sensitivity study about the inversion quality of aerosol optical thickness, aerosol mean height, and aerosol type. The forward operator is based on a lookup table with efficient data compression based on principal component analysis. Linear interpolation and computation of partial derivatives is performed in the much smaller space of expansion coefficients rather than wavelength. Thus, this approach is computationally fast and, at the same time, memory efficient. The sensitivity study explores the impact of instrument design on the retrieval of aerosol optical thickness and aerosol height. Considered are signal to noise ratio, spectral resolution, and spectral sampling. Also taken into account are surface inhomogeneities and variations of the aerosol type.