SCIAMACHY Cal/Val
Cal/Val Plan
The detailed SCIAMACHY Validation Plan was defined by the SCIAMACHY Validation and Interpretation Group (SCIAVALIG) at the beginning of the mission, detailing the validation needs. A review of the validation activities was performed by SCIAVALIG in 2012 in the frame of the "The Great SCIAMACHY Validation Assessment".
Calibration Activities
The final calibrated Earth radiance spectra were obtained by applying several calibration steps to the measured Earthshine signals. They include in-flight calibration measurements, on-ground measurements performed under thermal vacuum conditions or ambient tests. Monitoring the optical performance monitoring made it possible to correct for degradation effects throughout the instrument's lifetime.
The calibration scheme adopted during the SCIAMACHY lifetime was defined by an expert calibration team before launch, and constantly revised throughout the mission. Accurate in-flight calibration parameters, required to calibrate the Level 1b products, were regularly calculated from specific measurement categories planned on daily, weekly, and monthly timescales. Dark signal parameters, Pixel-to-Pixel Gain and Etalon parameters, Spectral calibration parameters, and Solar reference spectra were thus derived.
Validation Activities
Validation had to ensure that geophysical quantities derived from SCIAMACHY measurements met quality requirements defined by the mission manager, in particular for scientific studies and applications. SCIAMACHY validation activities were undertaken continuously and co-ordinated by SCIAVALIG.
The validation reports below provide assessment of the product quality of the SCIAMACHY ESA operational datasets and are based on comparisons with independent collocated measurements in the frame of the various validation projects such as SCILOV, VALID, and MULTI-TASTE.
Level 1 Version 10
Report of the FDR4ATMOS project:
Level 2 Version 7.1
Reports of the FDR4ATMOS project:
The dataset generated with SGP version 7.0 (never released to users) underwent validation by BIRA-IASB, whereas the Level 2 V7.1 was not fully validated against ground-based measurements. Level 2 algorithms remained unchanged between SGP V7.0 and SGP V7.1, and the approach was to perform a non-regression test, to verify that the new Level 2 V 7.1 dataset matched the Level 2 dataset V 7.0 for all species, and the successful test implied that the validation of V7.0 applies also for V7.1.
- SCIAMACHY Level 2 Regression Test, FDR4ATMOS Task A D-A-12, FDR4ATA-TN-DLR-007, Issue 1, 3 July 2023
Level 2 Version 7.0
Reports of the Multi-TASTE project:
- Keppens, A., et al. “Multi-TASTE Phase F Validation report – Ground-based assessment of SCIAMACHY SGP 7.0 Level-2 Data Products O3, NO2, CO, CH4, BrO and H2O”, TN-BIRA-IASB-MultiTASTE-Phase-F-SCIA-SGP7-Iss1-RevC, Issue 1 / Rev. C, 18 December 2019.
Level 2 Version 6.01
Report of the Multi-TASTE project:
- A. Keppens et al., "SCIAMACHY SGP 6.01 Level-2 Data Products O3, NO2, CO, CH4, BrO and H2O", Validation Report of the Multi-TASTE project, TN-BIRA-IASB-MultiTASTE-Phase-F-SCIA-SGP6-Iss1-Rev.B, 21 December 2016
Reports from the SCILOV-15 project:
- Eichmann, K.-U., L. Lelli, M. Weber, and J. P. Burrows, "SCIAMACHY Level 2 Version 6.01 Cloud Parameter Validation", Version 1.1, 28 November 2017
- Rahpoe, N., M. Weber, and J. P. Burrows, "SCIAMACHY V6 Limb Ozone Validation", Version 3, 6 December 2017