Validation of Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer ozone profiles with aircraft observations during the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment–B

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) is an infrared instrument that was launched on board NASA's Aura satellite in 2004. TES is the first instrument to provide vertical information on tropospheric ozone while simultaneously measuring CO on a global basis. Before they may be used for scientific study, TES profiles must first be validated to determine if there are any systematic biases present. In this study we present a validation of TES tropospheric ozone using airborne differential absorption lidar (DIAL) profiles obtained during the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment–B (INTEX‐B) campaign, which took place during March–May 2006. During INTEX‐B the NASA DC‐8 aircraft conducted several flights, which allowed the DIAL instrument to obtain ozone profile measurements that were spatially coincident with TES special observations in three different geographical regions. Here we present comparisons of TES and DIAL tropospheric ozone profiles that show that, on average, TES exhibits a small positive bias in the troposphere of 5–15%. We also examine the use of in situ profile observations for the validation of TES tropospheric ozone, and we find these to be of most use in clean regions where the background ozone field is homogeneous.