Juan R. Pardo-Carrion
Abstract N. 15

J. R. Pardo, L. Pagani, G. Olofsson, P. Febvre and J. Tauber.

"Balloon-borne submillimeter observations of upper stratospheric O2 and O3"

J. Quant. Spectr. and Radiat. Transfer, 67, 2, 169-189 (2000).


A Swedish-French submillimeter telescope consisting on a 60 cm diameter Cassegrain telescope with a liquid helium cooled supraconductor - isolator - supraconductor (SIS) heterodyne receiver flew on September 25, 1997 in the south-west of France. It was carried out by the Pointed InfraRed Observation Gondola (PIROG, 8th flight) to a ceiling altitude of about 39.5 km. The submillimeter thermal emission of molecular oxygen (N(J)=3(2)-1(2) rotational resonance at 424.7631 GHz) and ozone [lines: 24(1,23)-24(0,24) at 424.846 GHz, 28(2,26)-27(3,25) at 425.158 GHz and 17(1,17)-16(0,16) at 441.340 GHz] was collected during about 8.5 hours. These are the first submillimeter high-resolution observations of molecules in the middle atmosphere obtained by a non ground-based instrument and will be helpful in preparing future submillimeter limb-sounding missions, like EOS-MLS (NASA) and Odin (Swedish Space Corporation). We present in this paper the calibration of the atmospheric data and their analysis along with some discussions on ozone mixing ratio just above the ceiling altitude of the experiment. Some validations of our results are done by means of comparisons with temperatures and ozone mixing ratios obtained simultaneously at the Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP) Lidar station, located also in southern France. The radiative transfer code used in this work to fit the data and retrieve temperature, pressure and ozone mixing ratio has been developed for the Odin mission. This work is an effective test of such a software package.