A fast H₂O total column density product from GOME ? validation with in-situ aircraft measurements

International audienceAtmospheric water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas which is responsible for about 2/3 of the natural greenhouse effect, therefore changes in atmospheric water vapour in a changing climate (the water vapour feedback) is subject to intense debate. H2O is also involved in many important reaction cycles of atmospheric chemistry, e.g. in the production of the OH radical. Thus, long time series of global H2O data are highly required. Since 1995 the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) continuously observes atmospheric trace gases. In particular it has been demonstrated that GOME as a nadir looking UV/vis-instrument is sensitive to many tropospheric trace gases. Here we present a new, fast H2O algorithm for the retrieval of vertical column densities from GOME measurements. In contrast to existing H2O retrieval algorithms it does not depend on additional information like e.g. the climatic zone, aerosol content or ground albedo. It includes an internal cloud-, aerosol-, and albedo correction which is based on simultaneous observations of the oxygen dimer O4. The high accuracy of our GOME H2O data is confirmed by the excellent agreement with in-situ aircraft measurements during the MINOS campaign in Greece in summer 2001. Our H2O algorithm can be directly adapted to the nadir observations of SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY) which was launched on ENVISAT in March 2002. Near real time H2O column data from GOME and SCIAMACHY might be of great value for meteorological weather forecast