GROUND-BASED MICROWAVE MONITORING OF MIDDLE ATMOSPHERE OZONE - COMPARISON TO LIDAR AND STRATOSPHERIC AND GAS EXPERIMENT-II SATELLITE-OBSERVATIONS

A dedicated ground-based microwave radiometer was in operation to moni tor the middle atmospheric ozone concentration at Table Mountain Facil ity (TMF) of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California (34.4 deg rees N, 117.7 degrees W) from July 1989 to June 1992, as a part of the Network for Detection of Stratospheric Change. Ozone profiles from 56 to 0.04 mbar (similar to 20-70 km) were retrieved from the microwave data. The focus in this paper is to validate the microwave ozone obser vations from 56 to 1 mbar by comparing the results from a JPL ground-b ased lidar located at the same site and from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II) satellite overpasses within 1000 km o f TMF and to examine the ability of these instruments to detect short- term, seasonal, and annual variations in ozone. The profile comparison results show that the mean differences of microwave ozone from lidar and SAGE II are about 5% or less and the root-mean-square scatter abou t the mean is mainly from the precision of the instruments. A correlat ion analysis of ozone time series suggests highly significant correlat ions up to 2.4 mbar between lidar and microwave measurements and up to 1 mbar between SAGE II and microwave. The short-term and seasonal var iation of the ozone profile seen in the microwave measurements is show n to be consistent with the observations of lidar and SAGE II, and the interannual variation of ozone appears to be detectable within an acc uracy of a few percent with the microwave instrument.