GOME-2 COMMISSIONING RESULTS. PART 2: FIRST GEOPHYSICAL VALIDATION

The Second Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (G OME-2) performs operational global monitoring of ozone column densities and ozone profiles, and column densities of other atmospheric trace gases such as NO2, BrO, OClO, HCHO, and SO2. GOME-2 is an improved version of the Global Ozone M onitoring Experiment (GOME-1) launched in 1995 onboard the second European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-2) (Callies et al., 2000). It is embarked on the MetOp series of three polar-orbiting operational meteorological satellites, with the first of the series MetOp-A launched on 19 th October 2006. GOME-2 geophysical validation activities follow success ful in-orbit verification of instrument function and performance. Initial checks include validation of the geolocation and spectral calibration parameters, and verification of the cloud and polarisation information. This is followed by validation of the radiance and irradiance products. This paper presents the first results of the GOME-2 geophysical validation activities from the commissioning phase. The outcome of GOME-2 inorbit verification is presented in a companion paper by Eisinger et al. (these proceedings).