Evaluation of SHADOZ sondes, HALOE and SAGE II ozone profiles at the tropics from SAOZ UV-Vis remote measurements onboard long duration balloons
Résumé
The performances of the SHADOZ ozonesonde network, HALOE and SAGE II in the tropics have been studied by comparison with SAOZ measurements. In the stratosphere, the main discrepancies arise from differences in altitude registration, particularly sensitive between 20 and 26km in the tropics because of the strong gradient of ozone concentration. In the upper troposphere, the SAOZ measurements are consistent with those of the sondes and the lidar in cloud free conditions, but biased high by 60% on average compared to ozonesondes over the Western Pacific, at American Samoa and Fiji. The likely explanation is the frequent occurrence of near zero ozone layers in the convective clouds of the South Pacific Convergence Zone which cannot be seen by SAOZ as well as all ground-based and space borne remote sensing instruments. Compared to SAOZ, SAGE II displays a 50-60% low bias similar to that already known with the ozonesondes, and a larger zonal variability. However, the significant correlation with PV suggests that useful information on tropospheric ozone could be derived from SAGE II. Finally, the unrealistic large offsets and variability in the HALOE data compared to all others, indicates that the measurements of this instrument are of limited use below 17km.