NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

We evaluated a new high-resolution solar reference spectrum for characterizing spaceborne Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) measurements as well as for retrieving ozone profile retrievals over the ultraviolet (UV) wavelength range from 270 to 330 nm. The SAO2010 solar reference has been a standard for use in atmospheric trace gas retrievals, which is a composite of ground-based and balloon-based solar measurements from the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) and Air Force Geophysics Laboratory (AFGL), respectively. The new reference spectrum, called the TSIS-1 Hybrid Solar Reference Spectrum (HSRS), spans 202–2730 nm at a 0.01 to ~0.001 nm spectral resolution. The TSIS-1 HSRS in the UV region of interest in this study is a composite of AFGL and ground-based solar measurements from the Quality Assurance of Spectral Ultraviolet Measurements In Europe (QASUME) campaign, with a radiometric calibration that used the lower resolution Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) instrument on the space-based Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor-1 (TSIS-1) mission. The TSIS-1 HSRS radiometric uncertainties were below 1% whereas those of SAO2010 ranged from 5% in the longer UV part to 15% in the shorter UV part. In deriving slit functions and wavelength shifts from OMI solar irradiances, the resulting fitting residuals showed significant improvements of 0.5–0.7% (relatively, 20–50%) due to switching from the SAO2010 to the TSIS-1 HSRS. Correspondingly, in performing ozone profile retrievals from OMI radiances, the fitting residuals showed relative improvements of up to ~5% in 312–330 nm with relative differences of 5–7% in the tropospheric layer column ozone; the impact on stratospheric ozone retrievals was negligible.