Monitoring tropospheric pollution using infrared spectroscopy from geostationary orbit

Abstract

This paper presents the Geostationary Fourier Imaging Spectrometer (GeoFIS), a new satellite instrument that has been proposed to monitor tropospheric key pollutants (O 3 , CO) in order to improve the predictive capability of tropospheric chemistry models. The horizontal resolution of GeoFIS is about <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>15</mml:mn> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mn>15</mml:mn> <mml:mtext> </mml:mtext> <mml:msup> <mml:mtext>km</mml:mtext> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:math> and the temporal resolution is about 60 minutes. It is shown that the current instrument concept (based on available or under development optical, detector and platform technologies) is sufficient to provide tropospheric concentrations of O 3 and CO as well as columns of species like PAN with the required accuracies.