This website provides an overview of the METOP/IASI methane (CH4) and aerosols data products developed at BIRA-IASB.

The IASI CH4 product is developed with the ASIMUT-ALVL algorithm. ASIMUT-ALVL is a radiative transfer and inversion software developed at BIRA-IASB, designed for simulating atmospheric radiances and inversions in planetary atmospheres (Vandaele et al., 2006). The ASIMUT-ALVL code has a specific interface dealing with the IASI instrument characteristics. The retrieval is based on the optimal estimation method (Rodgers, 2000). The contact person for this product is Charles Robert (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

The IASI aerosols product includes mineral dust (from deserts) and volcanic ash aerosols. The former is produced almost operationnally while the latter is currently still on a case-study basis (for example Maes et al., 2016). The product is obtained through a specific optimal estimation algorithm using RTTOV as radiative transfer (Saunders et al., 2018). The most recent reference is Callewaert et al., 2019. The contact person for this product is Sophie Vandenbussche (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

 

References

Callewaert, S., Vandenbussche, S., Kumps, N., Kylling, A., Shang, X., Komppula, M., Goloub, P., and De Mazière, M.: The Mineral Aerosol Profiling from Infrared Radiances (MAPIR) algorithm: version 4.1 description and evaluation, Atmos. Meas. Tech.,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-3673-2019, 2019.

De Wachter, E., Kumps, N., Vandaele, A. C., Langerock, B., and De Mazière, M.: Retrieval and validation of MetOp/IASI methane, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 4623–4638, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-4623-2017, 2017.

Maes, Kwinten, Sophie Vandenbussche, Lars Klüser, Nicolas Kumps, and Martine de Mazière: Vertical Profiling of Volcanic Ash from the 2011 Puyehue Cordón Caulle Eruption Using IASI. Remote Sensing 8 (2). https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/8/2/103, 2016

Rodgers C.D.: Inverse methods for atmospheric sounding. Theory and practice, World scientific, Singapore, 90-98, 2000.

Saunders, R., Hocking, J., Turner, E., Rayer, P., Rundle, D., Brunel, P., Vidot, J., Roquet, P., Matricardi, M., Geer, A., Bormann, N., and Lupu, C.: An update on the RTTOV fast radiative transfer model (currently at version 12), Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 2717-2737, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2717-2018, 2018.

Vandaele, A.C., M. Kruglanski, and M. De Maziere, Modelling and retrieval of Atmospheric spectra using ASIMUT in Proc. of the First ‘Atmospheric Science Conference’, ESRIN, Frascati, Italy, 8 – 12 May 2006 (ESA SP-628, July 2006).