Nonlinear Retrieval of Atmospheric Ozone Profile from Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Measurements: Theory and Simulation

The Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet and Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (SBUV/TOMS) instrument has provided useful data for deducing ozone vertical profiles and total ozone amounts. Although, data processing tech-niques for solving the inverse problem have been discussed, the retrieval accuracy still needs to be improved by devel-oping new methodology. In this paper the Newtonian non-linear iteration method was applied to the Ultraviolet radiative transfer equation to retrieve the atmospheric ozone vertical distribution. In order to reduce the number of unknowns for retrieval and make the solution procedure more stable, the atmospheric ozone profile is represented by its Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs) which can be derived from a set of global ozone profiles such as TIGR. Ozone retrievals based on simulated SBUV albedo measurements from 6 model atmospheres show the potential ap-plication of this method in operational processing of SBUV real observed measurements which will fly on the satellite such as NOAA-K.