DIAL- SONDE OZONE PROFILES INTERCOMPARISON CAMPAIGN AT RÍO GALLEGOS, ARGENTINA

E. WOLFRAM, J. SALVADOR, P. F. ORTE, R. D’ELIA, C. CASICCIA, F. ZAMORANO, O. SOFÍA, E. QUEL

Congreso; 26th International Laser Radar Conference (ILRC 26),; 2012

The Río Gallegos experimental site is located in South Patagonia (51º 55’S, 69º 14’W), in subpolar region. This site is affected by the influence of polar vortex that provokes strong change in the ozone content over the site, mainly during austral spring. This experimental site has operative a differential absorption lidar instrument (DIAL) for the measurement of ozone vertical distribution between other ground-based instrument for ozone and solar radiation measurement. The altitude range of the ozone measurement is 14-45 km, which provides the opportunity to monitor the perturbations due to the passage of stratospheric polar air over Río Gallegos. This instrument joined to Network Data for Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) in 2008, and since this date the instrument was subjected to intercomparison campaigns with other ozone instruments, like satellites and ozone sondes between other. In this paper we describe two DIAL ozonesonde intercomparison campaigns held in March 2010 and 2011 collocated with the DIAL instrument. The two campaigns were designed with different protocols measurements of the ozone lidar experiment, given the opportunity to investigate the optimum temporal integration time of the lidar measurement. General good agreement was found between sonde and lidar ozone profiles, with relative difference below 10% in the overlap altitude range between both instruments.