Observation of tropospheric δD by IASI over western Siberia: comparison with a general circulation model

This study presents the joint H216O and HDO retrieval from Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) spectra over western Siberia. IASI is an instrument on board the MetOp-A European satellite. The global coverage of the instrument and the good signal-to-noise ratio allow us to provide information on δD over this remote region. We show that IASI measurements may be used to estimate integrated δD between the surface and 3 km altitude or from 1 to 5 km depending on the thermal contrast, with observational errors lower than 4% and 7%, respectively. The retrieved data are compared to simulations from an isotopic general circulation model, LMDZ-iso for 2011. The satellite measurements and the model agree well and they reproduce well the seasonal and day-to-day variations for δD, presenting a good correlation (r up to 0.8 with the smoothed data in summer). The IASI-based retrievals also show the seasonal variation of the specific humidity in both altitude ranges