Comparison of UV irradiances from Aura/Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) with Brewer measurements at El Arenosillo (Spain) – Part 2: Analysis of site aerosol influence

Abstract

Abstract. Several validation studies have shown a notable overestimation of the clear sky ultraviolet (UV) irradiance at the Earth's surface derived from satellite sensors such as the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) with respect to ground-based UV data at many locations. Most of this positive bias is attributed to boundary layer aerosol absorption that is not accounted for in the TOMS/OMI operational UV algorithm. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to analyse the aerosol effect on the bias between OMI erythemal UV irradiance (UVER) and spectral UV (305 nm, 310 nm and 324 nm) surface irradiances and ground-based Brewer spectroradiometer measurements from October 2004 to December 2008 at El Arenosillo station, with meteorological conditions representative of the south-west of Spain. The effect of other factors as clouds, ozone and the solar elevation over this intercomparison were analysed in detail in a companion paper (Antón et al., 2010). In that paper the aerosol effects were analysed making only a rough evaluation based on aerosol optical depth (AOD) information at 440 nm wavelength (visible range) without applying any correction. Here, the correction of the OMI UV data is proposed based on a detailed study about the determination of absorbing aerosols provided by AERONET data. Because of the difficulty to have reliable data about absorbing aerosol properties at many sites, first we consider AOD, Angstrom exponent and also OMI-Aerosol Index for this determination, but finally single scattering albedo (SSA) from AERONET was used since it represents a much more precise information. An aerosol correction expression was applied to the OMI operational UV data using two approaches to estimate the UV absorption aerosol optical depth, AAOD. The first approach was based on an assumption of constant SSA value of 0.91. This approach reduces OMI UVER bias from 13.4 to 8.4%. Second approach uses daily AERONET SSA values reducing the bias only to 11.6%. Therefore we have obtained a 37% and 12% of improvement, respectively. Similar results were obtained for spectral irradiances at 305 nm, 310 nm and 324 nm, where for 324 nm the OMI bias is reduced from 10.5 to 6.98% for constant SSA and to 9.03% for variable SSA. Contrary to what was expected, the constant SSA approach has a greater bias reduction than variable SSA, but this is a reasonable result according to the discussion about the reliability of SSA values. Our results reflect the level of accuracy that may be reached at the present time in this type of comparison, which may be considered as satisfactory taking into account the remaining dependence on other factors. Nevertheless, improvements must be accomplished to determine reliable absorbing aerosol properties, which appear as a limiting factor for improving OMI retrievals.