Retrieval of tropospheric ozone from simulations of limb spectral radiances as observed from space

The frequent and direct remote sensing of the tropospheric ozone profile is a critical environmental measurement to be performed on a global scale by future satellite instruments. An approach has been developed for the retrieval of tropospheric ozone profiles from 9.6 μm limb‐viewing clear‐sky radiances generated for the spectral resolution and signal‐to‐noise of the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). TES is a high‐resolution Fourier transform spectrometer under development for NASA's Earth Observing System Aura platform ( http://eos-chem.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ). The simulated radiance spectra are calculated from northern hemisphere midlatitude lidar profile measurements. The ozone profile retrieval and the associated errors are obtained as a function of atmospheric pressure level using the method of nonlinear least squares with regularization. In order to accelerate convergence a two‐stage strategy has been applied in which the full profile retrieval has been preceded by a shape retrieval involving a smaller set of near independent parameters. Our analysis indicates that the O3 profile can be retrieved from the TES limb measurements with a relative uncertainty of 5% (1σ) in the middle and upper troposphere.