Initial intercomparison of ozone and nitrogen dioxide number density profiles retrieved by the ACE-FTS and GOMOS occultation experiments

Abstract

The ozone and nitrogen dioxide vertical number density prrofiles measured by the solar occultation Fourier transform spectrometer ACE-FTS and the UV-Vis stellar occultation instrument GOMOS are intercompared for 370 quasi-coincident observations. A good agreement is found for ozone, mostly better than 10% between 15 and 45 km. Also, there is no evidence for a systematic altitude registration error in the ACE-FTS profiles. A considerable ACE-FTS negative bias (50-100%) is found however for the nitrogen dioxide data that cannot be explained by the use of a local photochemical model. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.