References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-9-7889-2009

Characterization of methane retrievals from the IASI space-borne sounder

Razavi

¹ Clerbaux

¹ ² Wespes

¹ ⁴ Clarisse

¹ ⁴ Hurtmans

¹ Payan

³ Camy-Peyret

³ Coheur

P. F.

¹ ⁴

Service de Chimie Quantique et Photophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.), Brussels, Belgium

UPMC Univ. Paris 06; Université Versailles St-Quentin; CNRS/INSU, LATMOS-IPSL, Paris, France

UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS UMR7092, LPMAA/IPSL, Paris, France

They are, respectively FRIA researcher, Scientific collaborator and Research Associate with FRS-FNRS, Belgium

21 10 2009

9 20 7889 7899

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.

This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/7889/2009/acp-9-7889-2009.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/7889/2009/acp-9-7889-2009.pdf

Although the global methane (CH4) concentration has more than doubled since pre-industrial times, local emission sources are still poorly identified and quantified. Instruments onboard satellites can improve our knowledge about the methane global distribution owing to their very good spatial coverage. The IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) instrument launched on the European MetOp-A platform is a Fourier transform spectrometer which measures the thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth and its atmosphere. In this paper, we present the first global distribution of methane total columns (mostly sensitive to the middle troposphere) from the IASI spectra using the methane ν4 absorption band. The retrieval spectral range was set in order to minimize possible spectroscopic issues. Results are discussed in terms of error budget and vertical sensitivity. In addition, we study the gain of information on surface methane concentrations provided by using the ν3 band, which is partly covered by IASI on the short-wave end of the spectra (extending to 2760 cm−1), where solar reflection contributes significantly.

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