Nitrous oxide profiling from infrared radiances (NOPIR): Algorithm description, application to 10 years of IASI observations and quality assessment

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the third most abundant anthropogenous greenhouse gas (after carbon dioxide and methane), with a long atmospheric lifetime and a continuously increasing concentration due to human activities, making it an important gas to monitor. In this work, we present a new method to retrieve N2O concentration profiles (with up to two degrees of freedom) from each cloud-free satellite observation by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), using spectral micro-windows in the N2O nu(3) band, the Radiative Transfer for TOVS (RTTOV) tools and the Tikhonov regularization scheme. A time series of ten years (2011-2020) of IASI N2O profiles and integrated partial columns has been produced and validated with collocated ground-based Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) and Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) data. The importance of consistency in the ancillary data used for the retrieval for generating consistent time series has been demonstrated. The Nitrous Oxide Profiling from Infrared Radiances (NOPIR) N2O partial columns are of very good quality, with a positive bias of 1.8 to 4% with respect to the ground-based data, which is less than the sum of uncertainties of the compared values. At high latitudes, the comparisons are a bit worse, due to either a known bias in the ground-based data, or to a higher uncertainty in both ground-based and satellite retrievals.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • opensky@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Library

Resource Type publication
Temporal Range Begin N/A
Temporal Range End N/A
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format PDF
Standardized Resource Format PDF
Asset Size N/A
Legal Constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email opensky@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library
Distributor N/A
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email opensky@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library

Author Vandenbussche, Sophie
Langerock, Bavo
Vigouroux, Corinne
Buschmann, Matthias
Deutscher, Nicholas M.
Feist, Dietrich G.
García, Omaira
Hannigan, James W.
Hase, Frank
Kivi, Rigel
Kumps, Nicolas
Makarova, Maria
Millet, Dylan B.
Morino, Isamu
Nagahama, Tomoo
Notholt, Justus
Ohyama, Hirofumi
Ortega, Ivan
Petri, Christof
Rettinger, Markus
Schneider, Matthias
Servais, Christian P.
Sha, Mahesh Kumar
Shiomi, Kei
Smale, Dan
Strong, Kimberly
Sussmann, Ralf
Té, Yao
Velazco, Voltaire A.
Vrekoussis, Mihalis
Warneke, Thorsten
Wells, Kelley C.
Wunch, Debra
Zhou, Minqiang
De Mazière, Martine
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2022-04-08T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:36:24.476702
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:25346
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Vandenbussche, Sophie, Langerock, Bavo, Vigouroux, Corinne, Buschmann, Matthias, Deutscher, Nicholas M., Feist, Dietrich G., García, Omaira, Hannigan, James W., Hase, Frank, Kivi, Rigel, Kumps, Nicolas, Makarova, Maria, Millet, Dylan B., Morino, Isamu, Nagahama, Tomoo, Notholt, Justus, Ohyama, Hirofumi, Ortega, Ivan, Petri, Christof, Rettinger, Markus, Schneider, Matthias, Servais, Christian P., Sha, Mahesh Kumar, Shiomi, Kei, Smale, Dan, Strong, Kimberly, Sussmann, Ralf, Té, Yao, Velazco, Voltaire A., Vrekoussis, Mihalis, Warneke, Thorsten, Wells, Kelley C., Wunch, Debra, Zhou, Minqiang, De Mazière, Martine. (2022). Nitrous oxide profiling from infrared radiances (NOPIR): Algorithm description, application to 10 years of IASI observations and quality assessment. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7x63rnb. Accessed 21 June 2025.

Harvest Source