Intercomparison of NIMBUS 7 solar backscattered ultraviolet ozone profiles with rocket, balloon, and Umkehr profiles

Abstract

A global ozone data set covering the two years from November 1978 until October 1980, with an average of 1200 profiles per day, has been produced and archived from the solar backscattered ultraviolet (SBUV) instrument flown on the NIMBUS 7 spacecraft. The SBUV ozone profiles are compared with measurements from chemical and optical sensors launched on balloons and rockets and with ozone profiles obtained from the ground‐based Dobson spectrophotometers using the Umkehr method. The biases between the SBUV results and the balloon and Umkehr results are generally less than 10%. These biases are functions of layer height and latitude and are believed to be largely due to inconsistencies in the ozone absorption cross sections used for the various measurement systems. The precision of the SBUV measurements is found to be better than 8% for pressures between 1 and 64 mbar and better than 15% from 64 to 253 mbar.