Ground-based millimeter-wave observations of ozone in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere over Tsukuba

We present ground-based millimeter-wave observations of the upper stratospheric and mesospheric ozone, conducted at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) in Tsukuba, Japan (36°N, 140°E). The measurements were started in October 1995. The millimeter-wave radiometer used for the present study is equipped with the superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer receiver and the acousto-optical spectrometer (AOS). Vertical profiles of ozone mixing ratio from 20 to 80 km were retrieved from the observed ozone spectra for 23 months from October 1996 to August 1998 by using the weighted-damped least squares algorithm adopted for differential emission. Vertical resolution is estimated to be 14 km from the averaging kernels. The total random error on the retrieval is estimated to range from 3 to 13% in summer, and from 2 to 9% in winter, respectively, between 38 and 76 km in altitude. The ozone number density at 38 km with the radiometer which was convolved with the vertical resolution of the lidar agrees well with that of the lidar within a systematic difference of 1%, indicating that the millimeter-wave data at 38 km are validated by the lidar measurements. Annual and semi-annual variations are clearly seen at 50 and 76 km, respectively, in the time series of the ozone mixing ratio observed during 23 months. The annual variation at 50 km is consistent with that in the climatological models. The semi-annual variation at 76 km observed in this work is similar to that of the Solar Mesospheric Explorer (SME) data, except that the ozone mixing ratio in spring measured with SME is about 1.7 times larger than that in autumn while those with the radiometer are almost same.

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