The importance of signals in the Doppler broadening range for middle-atmospheric microwave wind and ozone radiometry

Rüfenacht, Rolf; Kämpfer, Niklaus (2017). The importance of signals in the Doppler broadening range for middle-atmospheric microwave wind and ozone radiometry. Journal of quantitative spectroscopy & radiative transfer, 199, pp. 77-88. Elsevier 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2017.05.028

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Doppler microwave radiometry is a novel technique for the measurement of horizontal wind profiles at altitudes between 10 and 0.03 hPa, where there is a substantial lack of observations. All wind radiometers currently in use rely on ground-based observations of microwave radiation emitted by atmospheric ozone. Besides the well-known primary ozone layer in the stratosphere a secondary ozone layer forms near 10⁻³ hPa during nighttime. We show that the emission signal of this secondary ozone layer cannot be neglected for the retrieval of mesospheric winds and that it can even alter nighttime ozone retrievals. However, the present study also demonstrates that with a reasonably adequate representation of the atmospheric reality in the mesopause region bias-free wind retrievals throughout the entire sensitive altitude range of the instruments can be achieved during day and nighttime. By applying the improved ozone a priori setup to real observation data the average zonal wind difference to models was substantially reduced and a realistic diurnal cycle was reproduced. Moreover the presence of the high nighttime mesopause ozone signal could enable future retrievals of mean winds beyond the altitude range dominated by pressure broadening.

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