GOME ozone profiles: a global validation with HALOE measurements Original Research Article

The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) aboard ESAʹs ERS-2 satellite measures the reflected and backscattered radiation from the earth in the UV/visible spectral range at moderate spectral resolution. Vertical ozone profiles can be derived from top-of-atmosphere (TOA) nadir observations using the FUll Retrieval Method FURM, which is based upon an advanced Optimal Estimation inversion scheme. These ozone profiles are validated with profiles from the HALogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE). For the year 1998, over 2100 coincident measurements of the instruments were found. These measurements are divided into 20 subsets of five zonal bands and four seasons. For each subset, the mean relative deviation between the corresponding profiles are calculated. In most cases the mean deviations between the HALOE and GOME profiles are below 10 % for the altitude range from 15 to 35 km.