Improved Aura/OMI Solar Spectral Irradiances: Comparisons With Independent Data Sets and Model Predictions. Issue 12 (12th December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Marchenko, S. V.; Woods, T. N.; DeLand, M. T.; Mauceri, S.; Pilewskie, P.; Haberreiter, M.
• Is Part Of: Earth and space science. Volume 6:Issue 12(2019)
• Page Start: 2379
• Page End: 2396
• Publication Date: 2019-12-12
• Subjects: solar variability -- solar activity cycles -- solar irradiances; Space sciences -- Periodicals; Geophysics -- Periodicals; 500.5
• DOI: 10.1029/2019EA000624
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2333-5084

Abstract

Abstract : The stability and longevity of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), flying on board the (active) Aura Earth‐observing satellite since July 2004, facilitates creation of accurate, long‐term record of relative (normalized to a solar minimum) solar spectral irradiances (SSIs). Here we discuss technical details of the most recent version (V3) of the SSI product that provides approximately daily measurements for the period July 2006 to April 2018 in the 265‐ to 500‐nm domain with average 0.5‐nm resolution. We compare OMI SSIs with concurrent independent observations and model estimates. The short‐term (solar rotational cycle) observations and model predictions mostly agree to ∼0.1–0.2% in the ultraviolet domain, with an excellent, down to ∼0.01% agreement in the visible range. The long‐term (solar cycle) comparisons pose more challenges in the ultraviolet domain, where the differences between observations and models frequently exceed the rather conservative ∼0.1% (both point‐to‐point and long‐term) OMI uncertainties. In the visible range, these differences gradually diminish to <0.05% yet again pointing to reliability and robustness of the amassed SSI data in this domain. Key Points: We describe the new version (V3) of the OMI solar spectral irradiances that provides a record of Solar Cycle 24 variability in the 265‐ to 500‐nm range The short‐term (solar rotation) SSI variations: Comparison with the concurrent independent observations and model predictions show good‐to‐excellent (predominantly, to ∼0.1% in UV, and down to ∼0.01% in the visible) agreement between the various data sets The long‐term (solar cycle) SSI variations in the UV domain pose serious challenges, with model‐observation and observation‐observation disagreements frequently exceeding 0.5%. In the visible the inter‐comparisons show good agreement, down to ∼0.05%