Investigation of spatial and temporal variability in lower tropospheric ozone from RAL Space UV–Vis satellite products

<p>Ozone is a potent air pollutant in the lower troposphere and an important short-lived climate forcer (SLCF) in the upper troposphere. Studies using satellite data to investigate spatiotemporal variability of troposphere ozone (TO<span class="inline-formula">₃)</span> have predominantly focussed on the tropospheric column metric. This is the first study to investigate long-term spatiotemporal variability in lower tropospheric column ozone (LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span>, surface–450 hPa sub-column) by merging multiple European Space Agency–Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) products produced by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) Space. We find that in the LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span>, the degree of freedom of signal (DOFS) from these products varies with latitude range and season and is up to 0.8, indicating that the retrievals contain useful information on lower TO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span>. The spatial and seasonal variation of the RAL Space products are in good agreement with each other, but there are systematic offsets of up to 3.0–5.0 DU between them. Comparison with ozonesondes shows that the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME-1, 1996–2003), the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY (SCIAMACHY, 2003–2010) and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI, 2005–2017) have stable LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span> records over their respective periods, which can be merged together. However, GOME-2 (2008–2018) shows substantial drift in its bias with respect to ozonesondes. We have therefore constructed a robust merged data set of LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span> from GOME-1, SCIAMACHY and OMI between 1996 and 2017. Comparing the LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span> differences between the 1996–2000 and 2013–2017 5-year averages, we find sizeable positive increases (3.0–5.0 DU) in the tropics/sub-tropics, while in the northern mid-latitudes, we find small-scale differences in LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span>. Therefore, we conclude that there has been a substantial increase in tropical/sub-tropical LTCO<span class="inline-formula">₃</span> during the satellite era, which is consistent with tropospheric column ozone (TCO<span class="inline-formula">₃)</span> records from overlapping time periods (e.g. 2005–2016).</p>