CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Ground-based and satellite observations have shown a dramatic decrease in ozone over Antarctica during Southern Hemisphere spring since about 1980. To contribute with the study of ozone phenomenon, a new sensitive radiometer for atmospheric minor constituents has been installed in the Atmospheric Observatory of Austral Patagonia (OAPA), LIDAR Division of CEILAP in October 2010. This observatory is established in the city of Río Gallegos (51º 36' S, 69º 19' W), Argentina, in the South Patagonia, a region affected by the spring ozone hole. The millimeter wave radiometer was developed in STEL (Solar Terrestrial Environment Laboratory), Nagoya University, Japan. This instrument is based on the detection of spectral signal from the atmosphere due to the rotational transition of the molecules being studied. The main part of the radiometer is a mm-wave superheterodyne system which uses a Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixer receiver. This passive remote sensing instrument has been designed to measure the ozone amount continuously and automatically in the stratosphere and lower mesosphere between 25 and 80 km. In this region, mean ozone lifetime is the order of hours. The radiometer has a typical time resolution of 30 minutes. Therefore, this will permit to measure diurnal-nocturnal variation due to photochemical process. The retrieved ozone profiles will be increase the vertical range of the ozone profile observed in this site with the DIAL system. In addition, the observatory has an important instrumental capability able to observe the stratospheric ozone amount like a SAOZ and Brewer spectrometer belonging to France and INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais), Brazil respectively. The aim of this presentation is to describe the millimeter wave radiometer and to discuss the instrumental capability installed in this subpolar latitude.

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