Evaluation of the Ozone Fields in NASA’s MERRA-2 Reanalysis

AbstractThe assimilated ozone product from the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2), produced at NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) spanning the time period from 1980 to the present is described herein, and its quality is assessed. MERRA-2 assimilates partial column ozone retrievals from a series of Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Radiometer (SBUV) instruments on NASA and NOAA spacecraft between January 1980 and September 2004: starting in October 2004, retrieved ozone profiles from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and total column ozone from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA’s EOS Aura satellite are assimilated. The MERRA-2 ozone is compared with independent satellite and ozonesonde data, focusing on the representation of the spatial and temporal variability of stratospheric and upper-tropospheric ozone and on implications of the change in the observing system from SBUV to EOS Aura. The comparisons show agreement within 10% (standard ...