The Ozone Monitoring Instrument

Authors :: Levelt, Pieternel F.
van den Oord, Gijsbertus H.J.
Dobber, Marcel R.
Malkki, Anssi
Visser, Huib
de Vries, Johan
Stammes, Piet
Lundell, Jens O.V.
Saari, Heikki
Source :: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. May, 2006, Vol. 44 Issue 5, p1093, 9 p.
Publication Year :: 2006
Abstract: The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) flies on the National Aeronautics and Space Adminsitration's Earth Observing System Aura satellite launched in July 2004. OMI is a ultraviolet/visible (UV/VIS) nadir solar backscatter spectrometer, which provides nearly global coverage in one day with a spatial resolution of 13 km x 24 km. Trace gases measured include [O.sub.3], N[O.sub.2], S[O.sub.2], HCHO, BrO, and OCIO. In addition, OMI will measure aerosol characteristics, cloud top heights, and UV irradiance at the surface. OMI's unique capabilities for measuring important trace gases with a small footprint and dally global coverage will be a major contribution to our understanding of stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry and climate change. OMI's high spatial resolution is unprecedented and will enable detection of air pollution on urban scale resolution. In this paper, the instrument and its performance will be discussed. Index Terms--Air quality, atmospheric research, ozone layer, ultraviolet/visible (UVMS) satellite instruments.