Comparisons of Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) ozone profiles to ozonesondes: Methods and initial results

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) on the Earth Observing System (EOS)-Aura spacecraft measures global profiles of atmospheric ozone with vertical resolution of 6-7 km in the troposphere for the nadir view. For a first validation of TES ozone measurements we have compared TES-retrieved ozone profiles to ozonesondes from fall, 2004. In some cases the ozonesonde data are from dedicated launches timed to match the Aura overpass, while other comparisons are performed with routine data available from the Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesonde (SHADOZ) archive and World Ozone and Ultraviolet Data Center (WOUDC) data archives. We account for TES measurement sensitivity and vertical resolution by applying the TES-averaging kernel and constraint to the ozonesonde data before differencing the profiles. Overall, for V001 data, TES ozone profiles are systematically higher than sondes in the upper troposphere but compare well in the lower troposphere, with respect to estimated errors. These comparisons show that TES is able to detect relative variations in the coarse vertical structure of tropospheric ozone.