Uncertainty budgets for ACE-FTS temperature, ozone, and water vapour profiles

Abstract:

The ACE-FTS (Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment - Fourier Transform Spectrometer) is a solar occultation limb sounder on the Canadian SciSat satellite. It was launched into a high inclination orbit in 2003 and continues to provide profiles of temperature and concentrations of over 40 atmospheric trace species, including ozone and water vapour. This study will discuss the methodology for producing uncertainty budgets for each product and present the most recent results for uncertainty components such as measurement noise, altitude registration, field-of-view modelling, and spectroscopic uncertainty. The ACE-FTS uncertainty budget was designed to fit within the framework outlined by the SPARC activity TUNER (Towards Unified Error Reporting) group, which is a consortium of limb sounding retrieval experts that have proposed recommendations to the satellite limb sounding community on best practices when reporting uncertainty budgets.