NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

We perform a study for characterizing the vertical resolution of tropospheric ozone profile retrievals from the combination of simulated ultraviolet (UV) and thermal infrared (TIR) observations that are representative of the EOS Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). Under the low thermal contrast conditions used for this simulation, we find that estimating ozone profiles by combining UV and TIR radiances results in a factor of two or more improvement in the ability to resolve boundary layer ozone, as compared with either instrument alone. In addition, there is a substantial improvement in the vertical resolution of ozone in the free troposphere (between 20% and 60%) as compared to the TES vertical resolution. This study points towards the importance of combining multiple spectral regions for dramatically improving the sounding of tropospheric trace gases.