MIPAS Level 1B Product Phase F Improvements

Abstract

The MIPAS mission is in its post-operational phase F. The data set covers a period of ten years from 2002 to 2012 and has an excellent proven quality. The MIPAS instrument has measured Infra-Red (IR) emission spectra at the Earth's limb in the middle and upper atmosphere along the orbit during day and night. The spectral range covered is 685 to 2410 cm-1 with a spectral sampling of 0.025 cm-1 during Full Resolution (FR) period and 0.0625 cm-1 during Optimised Resolution (OR) period. The MIPAS level 1B processor transforms instrument raw data into spectra calibrated spectrally and radiometrically with geo-location determined over the earth geoid of the line of sight tangent point. This paper describes areas for improvements of algorithms and calibration to increase data quality further before the last regeneration of the full Level 1B MIPAS data sets and final archiving. An assessment of data quality will be given in term of NESR, radiometric accuracy, spectral accuracy and pointing knowledge.