Advances of ozone satellite remote sensing in 60 years

Ozone is an important trace gas which absorbs UV radiation and protects life on earth from its potentially harmful effects. It is an important greenhouse gas in the troposphere. On average, approximately 90% of the atmospheric ozone is found in the stratosphere, and 10% is found in the troposphere. After the PM2.5 reduction, the increasing surface ozone concentration has become the primary concern in China, which is a significant pollution control task in the Chinese "14th Five-Year Plan." This study reviews the substantial development of international ozone satellite observations in the past 60 years, including the satellite payloads, ozone retrieval, and monitoring application. The development of satellite can be divided into three stages with three viewing geometries (limb, occultation, and nadir), the limb and occultation observations are mainly focused on the middle and upper atmospheres, while the nadir observation can provide effective information on the troposphere, with a better horizontal resolution and the capability to derive the ozone in low middle layer of troposphere by retrieval method. The ozone retrieval methods and monitoring applications are constantly updated with the development of the satellite. This study focuses on the important progress in the satellite remote sensing retrieval algorithm for total ozone column and vertical ozone profiles, the observation of surface ozone concentration and its precursors, the observation and regional transmission of stratospheric ozone intrusion, and the validation of ozone satellite observation data. The algorithm of the total ozone column retrieval has high accuracy (up to about 90%-95%) while the ozone profile retrieval algorithm limited by satellite payloads, clouds and method, its accuracy is relatively low (up to about 70%-75%). There are some problems in the retrieval of the near surface ozone concentration by machine learning method, which has poor robustness and easy to overfitting. Satellite remote sensing combined with other data can monitor stratospheric ozone intrusion, but it is still difficult to quantify the impact of surface ozone concentration. Compared with that of the international ozone satellite remote sensing monitoring, the development of China's ozone monitoring satellites lags behind. Although the hyperspectral observation satellites and atmospheric environment monitoring satellites to be launched in succession in the national civil space infrastructure planning have preliminary ozone monitoring capabilities, a large gap exists in the function and performance of satellite payloads, such as spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. In terms of retrieval algorithm and monitoring application, the retrieval accuracy of the total amount of ozone column at present is relatively high. Retrieval accuracy of ozone concentration in the middle and lower troposphere and near surface is insufficient. Evaluation and cause analysis of ozone pollution, such as the migration and transformation process of near surface ozone pollution and the stratospheric ozone intrusion identification, are also inadequate. These are the key problems that need to be solved in the next step. © 2022, Science Press. All right reserved.