Remote Sensing of the Middle and Upper Atmopshere from Satellite Platforms

我们萨斯喀彻温大学的研究小组在卫星平台遥感大气方面有20年的历史。我们帮助设计和建造了加拿大的OSIRIS仪器，自2001年秋天以来，我们一直在瑞典的奥丁卫星上操作它。OSIRIS在观察地球大气层时测量散射的阳光光谱，这些测量每两秒钟进行一次，用于推断大气中臭氧的数量以及影响臭氧化学的其他物种的数量。在过去的12年里，我们开发了一个最先进的计算机模型来模拟OSIRIS的测量结果，我们在一个复杂的数学方案中使用这个模型，将OSIRIS的测量结果与模型结果进行比较，以检索感兴趣的大气体积中的臭氧量。OSIRIS的臭氧测量在国际上被认为是高质量的，因此它们被用于许多以研究长期臭氧趋势为目标的倡议中。根据《蒙特利尔议定书》的规定，大气臭氧究竟是如何对氟氯化碳禁令做出反应的，这个关键问题还没有得到充分的回答。已经获得了许多知识，但要完全理解，需要比目前存在的数据集长得多的数据集。如果OSIRIS继续运行下去，它的测量结果将有助于回答这个问题。OSIRIS最终将停止运行，因此加拿大航天局对开发加拿大大气层析成像系统（CATS）非常感兴趣，这是OSIRIS的后续仪器。这种基于OSIRIS设计的新仪器将提供与OSIRIS类似的测量结果，并以这种方式帮助提供所需的长期数据集。然而，除了OSIRIS的传统之外，对OSIRIS的修改将被纳入CATS，这将使它能够以更高的空间和时间采样率进行测量。这些高得多的空间分辨率测量将被证明在中期天气预报和空气质量分析等应用中非常有用，这两者都是加拿大环境部活动的一部分。这些改进的臭氧和其他物种的测量也将使大学里的研究科学家能够更好地研究控制大气中重要区域的小规模过程，这些区域被称为对流层上层-平流层下层，或简称UTLS。本提案所包含的研究工作重点是进一步发展我们的计算机模型，使其能够准确有效地模拟更高空间分辨率的CATS测量。拟议的工作还将继续发展我们的检索技术，以便我们能够有效地将它们的能力与新的改进的测量方法和这些测量方法的模型相匹配。在拟议工作范围内开发的新仪器和新技术的结合将提供最佳的数据产品，从而使加拿大在卫星平台遥感大气领域的投资获得最佳回报。

Our group at the University of Saskatchewan has a twenty year history associated with remote sensing of the atmosphere from satellite platforms. We helped to design and build the Canadian OSIRIS instrument and we have operated it onboard the Swedish satellite Odin since the autumn of 2001. OSIRIS measures the scattered sunlight spectrum as it looks through the atmosphere of the earth and these measurements, made every two seconds, are used to infer the amount of ozone in the atmosphere as well as the amounts of other species that influence the ozone chemistry. Over the past twelve years we have developed a state of the art computerized model to simulate the measurements made by OSIRIS and we use this model in a complicated mathematical scheme that takes the OSIRIS measurements and compares them to the model results in order to retrieve the amount of ozone in the atmospheric volume of interest. The OSIRIS ozone measurements are known internationally to be of very high quality and as such they are used in many initiatives that have as their goal the study of long term ozone trends. The key question of how exactly atmospheric ozone has responded to the ban on CFCs, as dictated by the Montreal Protocol, has yet to be answered fully. Much knowledge has been gained but a complete understanding requires data sets that are significantly longer than those that currently exist. Should OSIRIS continue to operate forever its measurements could help answer this question. OSIRIS will eventually cease operations and because of this the Canadian Space Agency has a strong interest in the development of the Canadian Atmospheric Tomography System (CATS) that is a follow-on instrument to OSIRIS. This new instrument based on the OSIRIS design will provide measurements similar to those made by OSIRIS and in this way will help provide the required long term data sets. However, in addition to the OSIRIS heritage modifications to OSIRIS will be incorporated into CATS that will allow it to make measurements with much high spatial and temporal sampling rates. These much higher spatial resolution measurements will prove to be very useful within applications such as medium range weather forecasting and air quality analysis both done as part of Environment Canada activities. These improved measurements of ozone and other species will also allow research scientists within Universities to better study the small scale processes that govern the important region of the atmosphere known as the upper troposphere – lower stratosphere, or UTLS for short. The research work contained within this proposal is focused on further development of our computer model so that it can accurately and efficiently simulate the higher spatial resolution CATS measurements. The proposed work will also continue the development of our retrieval techniques so that we can effectively match their capabilities to both the new improved measurements and the model of these measurements. The combination of the new instrument and the new techniques developed within the proposed work will provide the best data products and as a result the best return for Canadian investment in the field of remote sensing of the atmosphere from satellite platforms.