Does UV instrumentation effectively measure ozone abundance?

Details Does UV instrumentation effectively measure ozone abundance? Does UV instrumentation effectively measure ozone abundance?

Aug 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992rmus.nasav....l&link_type=abstract

In its Reanalysis of Mariner 9 UV Spectrometer Data for Ozone, Cloud, and Dust Abundances, and Their Interaction Over Climate Ti

Computer Science

Atmospheric Composition, Mariner 9 Space Probe, Mars Atmosphere, Ozone, Ozonometry, Spectral Resolution, Ultraviolet Spectrometers, Annual Variations, Clouds (Meteorology), Dust Storms, Optical Thickness, Polar Regions, Spectral Reflectance, Ultraviolet Spectroscopy

Scientific paper

Measurements of O3 on Mars provide significant information about the chemistry and composition of the atmosphere, including long-term changes. The most extensive and accurate data were inferred from the Mariner 9 UV spectrometer experiment. Mars O3 shows strong seasonal and latitudinal variation, with column abundances ranging from 0.2 microns at equatorial latitudes to 60 microns over the northern winter polar latitudes (1 micron-atm is a column abundance of 2.689 x 1015 molecules cm(exp-2)). The Mariner 9 UV spectrometer scanned from 2100 to 3500 Angstroms in one of its two spectral channels every 3 seconds with a spectral resolution of 15 Angstroms and an effective field-of-view of approximately 300 km2. Measurements were made for almost half a Martian year, with winter and spring in the Northern Hemisphere and summer and fall in the Southern Hemisphere. The detectability limit of the spectrometer was approximately 3 microns of ozone. The UV spectrometer on Mariner 9 was incapable of penetrating the dust during dust storms; the single-scattering albedo and phase function of airborne dust and cloud ice are not known to the degree required to extract the small UV signal reflected up from near the surface. The reflectance spectroscopy technique would also have difficulty detecting the total column abundance of O3 in cases where large dust abundances exist together with the polar hood, especially at high latitudes where large solar zenith angles magnify those optical depths; yet these cases would contain the maximum O3, based on theoretical results. It is quite possible that the maximum O3 column abundance observed by Mariner 9 of 60 microns is common. In fact, larger quantities may exist in some of the colder areas with optically thick clouds and dust. As the Viking period often had more atmospheric dust loading than did that of Mariner 9, the reflectance spectroscopy technique may even have been incapable of detecting the entire O3 column abundance during much of the Mars year that Viking observed, particularly at high latitudes.

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