Tropical tropospheric ozone columns are retrieved with the convective cloud differential (CCD) technique using total ozone columns and cloud parameters from different European satellite instruments. Monthly-mean tropospheric column amounts [DU] are calculated by subtracting the above-cloud ozone column from the total column. A CCD algorithm (CCD_IUP) has been developed as part of the verification algorithm developed for TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on Sentinel 5-precursor (S5p) mission, which was applied to GOME/ERS-2 (1995–2003), SCIAMACHY/Envisat (2002–2012), and GOME-2/MetOp-A (2007–2012) measurements. Thus a unique long-term record of monthly-mean tropical tropospheric ozone columns (20°?S–20°?N) from 1996 to 2012 is now available. An uncertainty estimation has been performed, resulting in a tropospheric ozone column uncertainty less than 2?DU (??10?%) for all instruments. The dataset has not been yet harmonised into one consistent; however, comparison between the three separate datasets (GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2) shows that GOME-2 overestimates the tropical tropospheric ozone columns by about 8?DU, while SCIAMACHY and GOME are in good agreement. Validation with Southern Hemisphere ADditional OZonesondes (SHADOZ) data shows that tropospheric ozone columns from the CCD_IUP technique and collocated integrated ozonesonde profiles from the surface up to 200?hPa are in good agreement with respect to range, interannual variations, and variances. Biases within ±5?DU and root-mean-square (RMS) deviation of less than 10?DU are found for all instruments. CCD comparisons using SCIAMACHY data with tropospheric ozone columns derived from limb/nadir matching have shown that the bias and RMS deviation are within the range of the CCD_IUP comparison with the ozonesondes. The 17-year dataset can be helpful for evaluating chemistry models and performing climate change studies.
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