RETRIEVAL OF ATMOSPHERIC O-3, HNO3, CFC-11, AND CFC-12 PROFILES FROM MIPAS-B-89 LIMB EMISSION-SPECTRA

During the night from May 17 to May 18, 1989, the first of four flight s of the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding, Ba lloon-borne version (MIPAS-B) instrument took place from the Centre Na tional d'Etudes Spatiales balloon-launching site at Aire-sur-l'Adour ( France, 44 degrees N latitude). From approximately 33 km float attitud e, stratospheric and tropospheric limb infrared emission spectra have been recorded by this novel type of fast-scanning interferometer. Alth ough the measured spectra did not reach the expected quality and the a priori information on the corresponding viewing directions was coarse , the data were processed successfully with a retrieval algorithm spec ially adapted for application to noisy data. Mixing ratio profiles of ozone, nitric acid, CFC-11, and CFC-12 have been retrieved from limb s equences of wide spectral intervals by nonlinear least-squares fitting in combination with a layer-by-layer onion-peeling approach. A rigoro us error analysis has been carried out by means of Monte Carlo calcula tions.