Over the last decades, Earth’s atmospheric composition has been extensively monitored from space using different techniques and spectral ranges. The GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) instrument launched in 1995 by ESA showed that atmospheric space missions with high spectral resolution and coverage can not only be used for ozone monitoring but also to measure a range of trace gases and aerosol for air quality and climate (research) applications. Several decades after these pioneering efforts, continuous progress in instrument design, and retrieval techniques allows operational monitoring of stratospheric and tropospheric concentrations of a wide range of species with implications for air quality and climate. This is well demonstrated with the successful operations of the Sentinel 5 Precursor (S-5P) satellite since 2018.
S-5P is the first of a series of atmospheric missions within the European Commission’s Copernicus Programme and provides continuity in the availability of global atmospheric data products between its predecessor missions SCIAMACHY (Envisat) and OMI (AURA) and the future Copernicus Sentinel-4 and -5 satellite series. The current/future European (Copernicus) atmospheric measurement capabilities are/will be complimented by other space missions like MetOp, MetOp-SG, SUOMI-NPP, GOSAT/2, TanSat, GaoFen 5, OCO2/3, TEMPO, GEMS and others.
This session will include latest results for S-5P operational products (e.g. radiance/irradiance, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, formaldehyde, methane, cloud and aerosol information), results of algorithm studies to develop additional S5-P products (e.g. bromine monoxide, water vapour, glyoxal, AOD, SIF, chlorophyll, and chlorine dioxide) and their geophysical validation. Synergistic data usage or intercomparison results of S-5P measurements with con-current flying missions (e.g. MetOp, GOSAT) and algorithm studies for future mission retrieval algorithms (e.g. Sentinel-4/5) will be addressed. Opportunities that new instrument concepts can bring to the atmospheric air quality and climate monitoring communities will be included as well.