Monitoring of atmospheric composition using thermal infrared IASI sounder
Abstract
Atmospheric remote sensing from satellite is an essential component of the observational strategy deployed to monitor atmospheric pollution and changing composition. The IASI nadir looking thermal infrared sounder onboard MetOp will provide 15 years of global scale observations for a series of key atmospheric species. With its unprecedented spatial sampling and coverage this instrument provides a challenging amount of data to handle. This presentation will give an overview of the “near-real time” treatment of the data at Brussels and Paris with the aim at measuring atmospheric composition in the perspective of chemistry and air quality. The assessment is made in terms of species, accuracy and vertical information. Selected examples of global distributions in term of total columns and/or profiles (e.g. CO, CH4, O3, HNO3,...), plume detection ( e.g. NH3, volcanic SO2,...) as well as local distributions of organic species measured during fire events, (e.g. C2H4, CH3OH, HCOOH,...) will be presented.