A first comparison of GOMOS aerosol extinction retrievals with other measurements Original Research Article

The GOMOS experiment onboard ENVISAT is a UV–Vis spectrometer designed to obtain constituent density and aerosol extinction profiles by the measurement of transmitted light through the atmosphere during a stellar occultation. Although the aerosol amount in the stratosphere is presently at the lowest level since decades, the optical extinction is measurable. Starting from GOMOS transmittance spectra, we calculated local gas concentration and aerosol extinction profiles, using a global retrieval scheme: spectral and spatial inversion are performed at the same time, in one step. In the inversion model, the aerosol extinction spectrum is described as a quadratic polynomial. We subsequently compared individual aerosol extinction profiles with coincident results from SAGE II and POAM III. A good agreement is found.