Retrieval of Stratospheric Ozone Profiles from Limb Scattering Measurements of the Backward Limb Spectrometer on Chinese Space Laboratory Tiangong-2: Preliminary Results

The Backward Limb Spectrometer (BLS) onboard the Tiangong-2 (TG-2) space laboratory, the first spaceborne limb sounding instrument of China, was successfully launched on 15 September 2016, and its measurements of scattered photons of sunlight along the limb line-of-sight (LOS) in the 290–1000 nm range could be used to derive the vertical distribution of stratospheric ozone with high vertical resolution. Ozone profiles with a vertical resolution of one km in 10–40 km and 30–50 km were retrieved by the triplet and pair methods, respectively, and the ozone profiles retrieved by the BLS were compared with the ozone sounding data over four sounding stations. Meanwhile, the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite Limb Profiler (OMPS/LP) version 2.5 (v2.5) stratospheric ozone profile product was also introduced for comparison. The retrieval results showed a good agreement with the ozone profiles of ozone sounding and the OMPS/LP v2.5 product, and the differences were basically within 25% above 20 km, while relatively larger differences occasionally occurred below 20 km. The case studies over four sites worldwide demonstrate that the BLS is capable of measuring stratospheric ozone profiles with high vertical resolution.