Oxford MIPAS meeting#95
18 Apr 06

Present

• Oxford: Anu Dudhia, Alastair Burgess, Jane Hurley, Joanne Walker.

Instrument Status [Prev][Next]

The ESA web-page says that there was an Envisat anomaly (6 April 2006): On the, 6 April 2006, an anomaly occurred on-board Envisat causing an autonomous reconfiguration of all units of the service module computer to the B-chain and leading to the interruption of the measurements of all the payload instruments. Measurements have now been resumed.

March monthly report is here. there is a [summary at the bottom of this page. [Prev] [Next]

• Some details on the Envisat Web-Site including Instrument Availability web-site
• Latest version of Mission Planning Document covering 1 Jan 06 to 16 Apr 06: [.xls] [.html].
• More recent Mission Planning Document with overpass list (Apr06-May06): [.xls] [.html].

L1 Data [Prev][Next]

Some orbits from mid-2005 are of an unknown measurement type. Checking against the mission planning.

L1B RR coverage maps may be found here.

HiRDLS Comparisons (CW, AB, CP, AD) [Prev][Next]

(All) Teleconf last week. Aim to calculate MIPAS profiles that are coincident with HiRDLS measurements for validation purposes. Ideally, will retrieve pT + 10 species.

RAL interested in 5/6 Dec 05 for comaprisons with the DARWIN campaign (Australia).

2RR Microwindows (ie 0.0625cm^-1 resln) (AD) [Prev][Next]

Re-Selecting N2O5 MWs to make better use of the new continuum joint fitting approach as well as both N2O5 bands.

Cloud Parameter Retrievals (JH) [Prev][Next]

Plotting the cloud heights derived from the cloud indeces vs a heght determnined from a Planck curve shows a tight correlation (good news).

Qualitative comparisons of cloud presence in SEVERI / Meteosat images. Currently looking for cloud altitude data.

NOx (JW) [Prev] [Next]

Problems calculating polar winter stratospheric sunset times due to the low horizon angle -- Now investigating astronomy software.

Rate constant too large as N2O5 values remin unreasonably high.

L2 validation (AB/AD) [Prev][Next]

(AD) Investigating possible OM assignment bug in webpage creation...

Summary of the March monthly report (F.Niro, ESRIN)

• The MIPAS instrument performance improved during March 2006 after the 10 days of planned unavailability. In fact few slide anomalies were registered during the planned operations.
• An operational problem was encountered at ESOC during 28th March due to a macro-command transfer error, the instrument went to suspend four times and a long recovery procedure, which took two days, was needed to have MIPAS operational again on the 30th March 2006.
• The better slide performance was confirmed by the motor current plot of 21st March. This plot shows that the drive force for slide 1 in positive direction come back to nominal value (30 mA) after the high increase observed in February. This demonstrates the improvement of the bearing performances during the reporting month (see § 2.3.2).
• As cited above the instrument was switched-off for the first ten days of March for relaxing the slide system. The following measurements were planned for the remaining part of the month:
• - In-Flight calibrations (IF-9, IF-16, IF-6, IF-10 and IF-11) during 10 March
• - Nominal mode observations from 10 to 14 March
• - Observations in Middle and Upper Atmosphere mode for 19 to 21 March
• - Starting from 26th March UTLS-1 mode in support of the SAUNA campaign
• All these planned measurements were successfully acquired except for the IF-16 RAW data for which a problem was encountered in the PDS. This anomaly is a re-occurrence of a problem already reported during the IF-16 measurement of 28th October 2005 and registered on AMT as OAR-2015.
• The monitoring of the instrument temperatures is reported in this MR, the most important temperature fields remain stable, the deviations being always below 1K (see § 2.3.1).
• The cooler performance was also closely monitored during this month. The cooler seems to perform really well, the vibration being well below the warning level of 8 mg (see § 2.3.3.1).
• The gain, spectral and line of sight calibrations were carried out nominally during the reporting period, including the dissemination of the related ADF, none of the calibrations show anomalies (see § 2.4.2, § 2.4.3, § 2.4.4).
• A monitoring of the absolute gain increase since the last decontamination (June 2005) is presented in this MR besides the long term weekly increase.
• This monitoring will be updated from now on and will help the planning of the future decontamination activity, expected for mid May 2006; so far the gain has reached a value about 27% higher with respect to the gain recorded after last decontamination of June 2005 (see § 2.4.3). The manual processing with the L1b prototype of the AE measurement was terminated, the L1b files can be found on Uranus ftp server (see § 2.4.5.1).
• The latest processor IPF 4.65 was put into operation at D-PAC the 9th of February 2006 for the OFL processing of the entire MIPAS RR mission. The level 2 processing of all the relevant orbits from Aug to Sept 2004 was completed, while the level 1 production of historical data is still ongoing.
• The level 1 quality monitoring has started on a sub-set of products. The quality check of the considered L1 products has demonstrated an overall good quality of the D-PAC results, as can be seen considering the Band validity PCD (see § 2.4.6.1).
• This quality control has highlighted a PDS problem in the level 1 data processed during the period 8 ? 22 February 2006. In fact, the IPF used outdated calibration auxiliary files. The problem was due to a PDS anomaly, in particular to a lack of connection between ESRIN and the D-PAC. The dissemination of ADF has restarted nominally after this anomaly (OAR-2249). As a result the level 1 products already processed by D-PAC for this time interval have poor radiometric calibration. These products were deleted from D-PAC server and will be reprocessed soon.
• A quality control of the entire set of L2 products processed at D-PAC with IPF 4.65 was completed, revealing an overall good quality of the products, nevertheless an anomaly was found for some orbits of 21 ? 22 Aug 2004, this problem being now under investigation (see § 2.5.3.1).