Evaluation of Version 3 total and tropospheric ozone columns from EPIC
on DSCOVR for studying regional scale ozone variations
Abstract
In this study, we present evaluation of version 3 ozone products derived
from the DSCOVR EPIC instrument. EPIC’s total and tropospheric ozone
columns have been compared with correlative satellite and ground-based
measurements at time scales from daily averages to monthly means. We
found that the agreement improves if we only accept retrievals derived
from the EPIC 317 nm triplet and limit solar zenith and satellite
looking angles to 70°. With such filtering in place, the comparisons of
EPIC total columns with correlative satellite and ground-based data show
mean differences within ±5-7 DU (or 1.5-2.5%). The biases with OMI and
OMPS NM tend to be mostly negative in the Southern Hemisphere (SH),
while there are no clear latitudinal patterns in ground-based
comparisons. Evaluation of the EPIC ozone time series at different
ground-based stations with the correlative ground-based Brewer and
Pandora instruments and ozonesondes demonstrated good consistency in
capturing ozone variations at daily, weekly and monthly scales with a
persistently high correlation (r2>0.9)
for total and tropospheric columns. We examined the quality of EPIC
tropospheric ozone columns by comparing with ozonesondes at 12 stations
and found that differences in tropospheric column ozone are within ±2.5
DU (or ~±10%) after removing a constant 3 DU offset at
all stations between EPIC and sondes. The analysis of the time series of
zonally averaged EPIC tropospheric ozone revealed a statistically
significant drop of ~2-4 DU (~5-10%)
over the entire NH in spring and summer of 2020, which is partially
related to the unprecedented Arctic stratospheric ozone losses in
winter-spring 2019/2020 and reductions in ozone precursor pollutants due
to the COVID-19 pandemic.