Version 8 IMK/IAA MIPAS measurements of ClO

Abstract. Global distributions of chlorine monoxide (ClO) were retrieved from infrared limb emission spectra recorded with the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), covering the time period from July 2002 to April 2012. The retrieval was performed by constrained non-linear least squares fitting using spectral lines in the fundamental band of ClO around 844 cm-1. The vertical resolution of V8 ClO is 4 km at 18–20 km and 7.5–9.5 km at 40 km altitude. The considerable improvement at 40 km with respect to the previous V5 data version is achieved by extension of the spectral range for retrieval of upper stratospheric ClO. Errors are by far dominated by measurement noise and increase from 0.4–0.5 ppbv at 20 km to 0.8 ppbv at 50 km altitude. Thus, in general, individual ClO profiles are noisy, and profile averaging has to be performed for, e.g., analysis of the upper stratospheric maximum. However, strongly enhanced lower stratospheric ClO amounts of more than 1.5 ppbv during polar winter are well detected in single measurements. Along with the standard representation of the data, an alternative coarse grid representation that obviates the need to apply averaging kernels in certain situations is also provided. Due to improved modeling of the atmospheric continuum and the instrumental offset, the high bias in upper stratospheric ClO that had particularly affected the previous V5 data over the period 2005–2012 has been removed. A comparison with ClO measurements of the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on the Aura satellite shows good agreement between the lower stratospheric enhancements observed by the two instruments in polar winter. There is also good agreement between the upper stratospheric ClO amounts observed in the northern hemisphere and at southern hemispheric low latitudes. With the support of simulations from the Earth system model ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC), deviations between the ClO amounts of MIPAS and MLS in the Antarctic lower stratosphere during July and in the upper stratosphere, especially at southern mid- and high latitudes during winter, are attributed to the different local solar times of the measurements.