Temperature retrieval from stratospheric O3 and NO3 GOMOS data

Marion Marchand (1) , Slimane Bekki (1) , Franck Lefèvre (1) , Alain Hauchecorne (1)

1 SA - Service d'aéronomie

The chemistry of some species is strongly dependent on temperature. The typical example is the nighttime NO3 chemistry. We use a simple steady state relationship for NO3 to derive temperature from measurements of O3 and NO3 by the satellite GOMOS (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars) instrument. GOMOS-retrieved temperatures are validated against ECMWF (European Centre for Medium range Weather Forecast) temperatures. The temperature between 30 and 40 km can be retrieved with a bias of 3°K and a precision of about 3°K. The small bias can easily be removed by slightly adjusting the temperature-dependency of the NO2 + O3 reaction in the steady state relationship. The results demonstrate that measurements of chemical species contain useful information on the temperature that can be extracted when the temperature-dependent chemistry is known accurately. This temperature-dependency of chemical systems could in the long term be exploited in weather data assimilation system.

Mots clés: assimilation; Gomos data; temperature retrieval

Domaines: Physique Atmosphérique et Océanique [physics.ao-ph]

Marion Marchand, Slimane Bekki, Franck Lefèvre, Alain Hauchecorne. Temperature retrieval from stratospheric O3 and NO3 GOMOS data. Geophysical Research Letters, 2007, 34 (24), pp.L24809. ⟨10.1029/2007GL030280⟩. ⟨hal-00201146⟩