Early validation analyses of atmospheric profiles from

Abstract—We present results of early validation studies using retrieved atmospheric profiles from the Earth Observing System Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on the Aura satel-lite. “Global ” results are presented for MLS measurements of atmospheric temperature, ozone, water vapor, hydrogen chloride, nitrous oxide, nitric acid, and carbon monoxide, with a focus on the January–March 2005 time period. These global comparisons are made using long-standing global satellites and meteorolog-ical datasets, as well as some measurements from more recently launched satellites. Comparisons of MLS data with measurements from the Ft. Sumner, NM, September 2004 balloon flights are also presented. Overall, good agreeement is obtained, often within 5 % to 10%, but we point out certain issues to resolve and some larger systematic differences; some artifacts in the first publicly released MLS (version 1.5) dataset are noted. We comment briefly on future plans for validation and software improvements. Index Terms—Atmospheric retrievals, data validation. I