Ozone depletion in the Austral spring from UV microsatellite instrument

J. A. Fernandez-Saldivar; C. I. Underwood; S. Mackin

doi:10.1117/12.737960

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26 October 2007 Ozone depletion in the Austral spring from UV microsatellite instrument

J. A. Fernandez-Saldivar; C. I. Underwood; S. Mackin

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Proceedings Volume 6745, Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere XII; 674503 (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.737960
Event: SPIE Remote Sensing, 2007, Florence, Italy

Abstract

The Ozone Mapping Detector (OMAD) on board FASat-Bravo micro-satellite observed backscattered UV radiation to retrieve atmospheric ozone with low-spatial-resolution (150 x 150 km). This relatively coarse resolution with continuous global coverage allowed the observation of the seasonal ozone layer depletion over Antarctica in the austral spring in 1998. Previous analysis of this instrument have shown agreement in the radiances observed by OMAD and NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS-EP); these have even indicated the detection of an apparently higher ozone content anomaly due to a volcanic cloud of Nyamuragira volcano during its eruption in October 1998 [1]. A new improved version of the simplified algorithm used in OMAD data has been applied to the austral region to determine the total Ozone content. The new data processing allowed the observation of the development of the ozone depletion in 1998 from September to early December when ozone depletion normally occurs. The OMAD results showed good agreement overall when compared with those obtained from TOMS-EP despite their intrinsic instrumental differences. Results indicate Ozone contents lower than 150 Dobson Units (DU) in the Antarctic region with absolute errors less than 10 % in the vertical column content and high cross-correlations when compared with TOMS-EP. The value of this low-cost earth observation approach is discussed on the potential of such missions to provide additional atmospheric observations of large-scale phenomena.

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J. A. Fernandez-Saldivar, C. I. Underwood, and S. Mackin "Ozone depletion in the Austral spring from UV microsatellite instrument", Proc. SPIE 6745, Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere XII, 674503 (26 October 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.737960