References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-6-4705-2006

Ground-based remote sensing of HDO/H2O ratio profiles: introduction and validation of an innovative retrieval approach

Schneider

¹ Hase

¹ Blumenstock

IMK-ASF, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and Universität Karlsruhe, Germany

20 10 2006

6 12 4705 4722

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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We propose an innovative approach for analysing ground-based FTIR spectra which allows us to detect variabilities of lower and middle/upper tropospheric HDO/H2O ratios. We show that the proposed method is superior to common approaches. We estimate that lower tropospheric HDO/H2O ratios can be detected with a noise to signal ratio of 15% and middle/upper tropospheric ratios with a noise to signal ratio of 50%. The method requires the inversion to be performed on a logarithmic scale and to introduce an inter-species constraint. While common methods calculate the isotope ratio posterior to an independent, optimal estimation of the HDO and H2O profile, the proposed approach is an optimal estimator for the ratio itself. We apply the innovative approach to spectra measured continuously during 15 months and present, for the first time, an annual cycle of tropospheric HDO/H2O ratio profiles as detected by ground-based measurements. Outliers in the detected middle/upper tropospheric ratios are interpreted by backward trajectories.

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