Identification

Title

Impact of sampling frequency in the analysis of tropospheric ozone observations

Abstract

Measurements of ozone vertical profiles are valuable for the evaluation of atmospheric chemistry models and contribute to the understanding of the processes controlling the distribution of tropospheric ozone. The longest record of ozone vertical profiles is provided by ozone sondes, which have a typical frequency of 4 to 12 profiles a month. Here we quantify the uncertainty introduced by low frequency sampling in the determination of means and trends. To do this, the high frequency MOZAIC (Measurements of OZone, water vapor, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides by in-service AIrbus airCraft) profiles over airports, such as Frankfurt, have been subsampled at two typical ozone sonde frequencies of 4 and 12 profiles per month. We found the lowest sampling uncertainty on seasonal means at 700 hPa over Frankfurt, with around 5% for a frequency of 12 profiles per month and 10% for a 4 profile-a-month frequency. However the uncertainty can reach up to 15 and 29% at the lowest altitude levels. As a consequence, the sampling uncertainty at the lowest frequency could be higher than the typical 10% accuracy of the ozone sondes and should be carefully considered for observation comparison and model evaluation. We found that the 95% confidence limit on the seasonal mean derived from the subsample created is similar to the sampling uncertainty and suggest to use it as an estimate of the sampling uncertainty. Similar results are found at six other Northern Hemisphere sites. We show that the sampling substantially impacts on the inter-annual variability and the trend derived over the period 1998–2008 both in magnitude and in sign throughout the troposphere. Also, a tropical case is discussed using the MOZAIC profiles taken over Windhoek, Namibia between 2005 and 2008. For this site, we found that the sampling uncertainty in the free troposphere is around 8 and 12% at 12 and 4 profiles a month respectively.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7xd129w

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

2012-08-01T00:00:00Z

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

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