Identification

Title

Overview and characterization of retrievals of temperature, pressure, and atmospheric constituents from the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) measurements

Abstract

The retrieval algorithm for the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) instrument onboard NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Aura satellite is presented. The algorithm is based on optimal estimation theory, using a modified Levenberg-Marquardt approach for the iterative solution. Overview of the retrieval scheme, convergence criteria, and the forward models is given. Treatments of clouds and aerosols as well as line-of-sight gradients in temperature are described. The retrievals are characterized by high vertical resolution of 1 km and negligible a priori contribution for all products in regions of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) (most of the retrieval ranges). It is shown that these characteristics hold for all latitudes along a HIRDLS orbit. The weighting functions are narrow and show good sensitivity to temperature or gas perturbations in regions of high SNR. The retrieval error predicted by the algorithm consists of radiometric noise, pointing jitter error, smoothing error, and forward model error. For temperature, these components are shown for a midlatitude profile as well as for a full orbit. The predicted temperature error varies from 0.5 K to 0.8 K from the upper troposphere to the stratopause region, consistent with the empirical estimates given by Gille et al. (2008). For O₃ and HNO₃, the predicted errors and their useful pressure ranges are, respectively, 10–5% from 50 to 1 hPa and 5–10% from 100 to 10 hPa. These results are based on version V004 of the retrieved data, released in August 2008 to the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center ( http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov).

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d79g5p38

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2009-10-23T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2009 American Geophysical Union.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-17T15:29:03.793480

Metadata language

eng; USA