Long‐term changes in the total ozone mapping spectrometer relative to world primary standard Dobson spectrometer 83

We have examined the stability of the calibration of the Nimbus 7 solar backscatter ultraviolet (SBUV) and total ozone mapping spectrometer (TOMS) instruments by comparing their ozone measurements with those made by a single, very stable Dobson instrument: the world primary standard Dobson spectrometer number 83. Measurements of ozone made with instrument 83 at Mauna Loa observatory in eight summers between 1979 and 1989 were compared with coincident TOMS ozone measurements. The comparison shows that relative to instrument 83, ozone measured by TOMS (and SBUV) was stable between 1979 and approximately 1983, had decreased by 3% by 1986, and had decreased by almost 7% by 1989. A similar time dependence is seen when data from an ensemble of 39 Dobson stations throughout the world is compared with TOMS over the period 1979–1987. The most likely reason for the relative drift is that the diffuser plate used by both SBUV and TOMS to measure solar flux has suffered an uncorrected wavelength dependent degradation, with most of the degradation occurring after 1983. The recently released version 6 TOMS data, corrected using the internal “pair justification” technique, show almost no drift relative to Dobson instrument 83. We conclude from these comparisons that accurate measurements of long-term global ozone change will require a coherent system incorporating both ground based and satellite based ozone measurements.