Sulfur dioxide vertical column DOAS retrievals from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument: Global observations and comparison to ground-based and satellite data

We present a new data set of sulfur dioxide (SO2) vertical columns from observations of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI)/AURA instrument between 2004 and 2013. The retrieval algorithm used is an advanced Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) scheme combined with radiative transfer calculation. It is developed in preparation for the operational processing of SO2 data product for the upcoming TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument/Sentinel 5 Precursor mission. We evaluate the SO2 column results with those inferred from other satellite retrievals such as Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer and OMI (Linear Fit and Principal Component Analysis algorithms). A general good agreement between the different data sets is found for both volcanic and anthropogenic SO2 emission scenarios. We show that our algorithm produces SO2 columns with low noise and is able to provide accurate estimates of SO2. This conclusion is supported by important validation results over the heavily polluted site of Xianghe (China). Nearly 4years of OMI and ground-based multiaxis DOAS SO2 columns are compared, and an excellent match is found. We also highlight the improved performance of the algorithm in capturing weak SO2 sources by detecting shipping SO2 emissions in long-term averaged data, an unreported measurement from space.