Comparative assessment of ozone profile retrievals from OMI, GEMS, and TROPOMI measurements using daily ozonesonde soundings during the ACCLIP summer campaign in 2022

Ozone in the troposphere is an important air pollutant and greenhouse gas, and also acts as a principal oxidant in the lower atmosphere. This ozone is not emitted directly from anthropogenic sources, but formed though the photochemical reaction of nitrogen oxides with hydrocarbons in the presence of heat and sunlight. Ozone and its precursor can be transported across continents and to the oceans. As well, the downward transport from the stratosphere plays an important role in controlling the tropospheric ozone abundance. The spatial distribution and trends of tropospheric ozone should be regularly monitored and described to improve our understanding of the chemical and physical processes controlling tropospheric ozone and hence supplement the emission control suppressing the ozone pollution and climate change. In support of monitoring air quality, climate change, and ozone layer from space, hyperspectral UV measurements have been regularly accumulated from polar orbiting satellites since the late 1990s as well as geostationary service was recently started in 2019, but retrieving ozone profiles are still uncertain, especially over the troposphere. In this study, we present an optimal estimation-based ozone profile algorithm which is matured for processing OMI measurements with the state of art soft calibration. The capability of this research algorithm is also evaluated for retrieving ozone profiles from TROPOMI and GEMS. Each research ozone profile retrieval is inter-compared with the corresponding operational product. As a reference, we use daily ozonesonde soundings launched at Anmyeondo Island in South Korea during August 2022. It is collected as a part of the ACCLIP (Asian Summer Monsoon Chemical & Climate Impact Project) airborne field campaign in July-August, 2022 to investigate the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere composition under the influence of the Asian summer monsoon. In this study, quantitative differences between ozonesonde measurements and satellite data are assessed with the qualitative evaluation of how satellite measurements represent the ozone variability influenced by the atmospheric circulation.