Validation of Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics/Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (TIMED/SABER) v1.07 ozone at 9.6 mu m in altitude range 15-70 km

The Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument operating onboard the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite since 2002 has provided day and nighttime measurements of ozone on a daily basis in the middle to upper atmosphere (15-100 km) using limb scanning in the 9.6-mu m band. The focus of this paper is on validation of v1.07 O-3 in the stratosphere and mesosphere region below 70 km. SABER v1.07 O-3 measurements have a precision of similar to 1-2% in the stratosphere and similar to 3-5% in the lower mesosphere. A SABER positive bias exists in all regions other than the lower stratosphere. The positive biases in the stratosphere are within similar to 5-12% in most cases except in the equatorial to middle latitudes in the altitude range similar to 30-50 km, where they reach similar to 15-17% and exceed the combined systematic error by similar to 5-6%. The comparisons in the lower mesosphere indicate that SABER O-3 captures the diurnal variability very well. The best agreement of similar to 5-7% occurs for daytime comparisons with solar occultation measurements in the lower mesosphere. As with most large satellite data sets, a small portion of the O-3 profiles show unrealistically large values. The occurrences of these profiles were revealed using a probability approach, which enabled the identification of the time frames and spatial regions where these anomalies occur.