INVESTIGATION OF THE IMPACT OF HORIZONTAL INHOMOGENEITIES ON MIPAS/ENVISAT PRODUCTS

摘要

Several studies have highlighted the importance ofrnproperly account for temperature horizontalrninhomogeneities in the retrieval of atmosphericrnconstituents from limb sounding infrared space-bornrnmeasurements. For this reason, 2-dimensional (2-D)rntomographic retrieval algorithms have been developed.rnAmong these algorithms, the Geofit-Multi TargetrnRetrieval (GMTR) [1] system was specificallyrndeveloped to process Michelson Interferometer forrnPassive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS/ENVISAT)rnmeasurements. In this study, we exploit the 2-DrnForward Model (FM) of the GMTR system to evaluaternthe impact of the horizontal inhomogeneities onrnMIPAS/ENVISAT level 2 products retrieved with a 1-rnD approach. We also investigate the advantages andrndisadvantages of the use of an intermediate approachrnbetween the 1-D and 2-D retrieval whereby externalrngradients are introduced in the 1-D retrieval.