Retrieval of tropospheric carbon monoxide for the MOPITT experiment

A retrieval method for deriving the tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) profi le and column amount under clear sky conditions has been developed for the Measurements of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument, scheduled for launch in 1998 onboard the EOS-AMI satellite. This paper presents a de scription of the method along with analyses of retrieval information conten t, These analyses characterize the forward measurement sensitivity, the con tribution of a priori information, and the retrieval vertical resolution. E nsembles of tropospheric CO profiles were compiled both from aircraft in si tu measurements and from chemical model results and were used in retrieval experiments to characterize the method and to study the sensitivity to diff erent parameters. Linear error analyses were carried out in parallel with t he ensemble experiments. Results of these experiments and analyses indicate that MOPITT CO column measurements will have better than 10% precision, an d CO profile measurement will have approximately three pieces of independen t information that will resolve 3-5 tropospheric layers to approximately 10 % precision. These analyses are important for understanding MOPITT data, bo th for application of data in tropospheric chemistry studies and for compar ison with in situ measurements.