Updated prototype processor for GOME-2 formaldehyde observation

Kurzfassung

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is often produced as intermediate or byproduct during the oxidation of VOCs and NOx to ozone. Moreover it might be directly emitted e.g. by biomass burning. In remote background regions the oxidation of methane is an important source. Within the AC-SAF project HCHO has been retrieved from GOME-2 observation for many years. We now present an updated prototype algorithm for the HCHO. It is based on the latest development with QA4ECV and ESA's CCI+ precursor project. One major improvements is the use of local and actual apriori profiles from the CAMS reanalysis data set. We applied the algorithm to all GOME-2 instruments and compared it to the operational GDP 4.8 algorithm and the QA4ECV dataset. We found significant improvements in the VCD compared to the GDP4.8 The noise in the data however, is hardly affected, except for the South Atlantic Anomaly region. Besides the comparison with the previous versions also some validation results will be shown.