Atmospheric ozone determination by solar occultation using the UV spectrometer on the Solar Maximum Mission.

The UV spectrometer polarimeter instrument on the Solar Maximum Mission spacecraft has been used to measure ozone in the 53–75-km altitude interval by the technique of solar occultation. A 1 × 180-sec of arc entrance aperture spectrometer with 0.04-A spectral resolution was employed. Resulting high-quality data are reduced by expressing measured UV attenuation as a Volterra integral equation. Solution of the equation is accomplished by expressing the integral in terms of a series representing the sum of ozone densities contained in concentric shells through tangent points separated by specified altitude increments. Sample ozone vs altitude profiles are presented for the equatorial region. These data show reproducibility to better than 10%. The density at 60 km is 7.3 ± 0.15 × 109 cm−3 for 2.5° latitude and longitudes between 81 and 105° west in Sept. 1980. Density vs altitude profile exhibits changes in slope between 50 and 75 km.