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Climate Prediction Center

 

  The Climate Prediction Center (CPC), part of the National Weather Service (NWS), has been involved in analyzing total ozone and ozone profile information since the 1970's via the NASA/NIMBUS-4 satellite and the Backscatter UltraViolet spectrometer (BUV) instrument. This role continued with ozone data retrieved from another NASA satellite NIMBUS-7 carrying the Solar BUV (SBUV) instrument. NOAA began monitoring ozone operationally in 1985 with the launch of NOAA-9 carrying a modified SBUV instrument designated the SBUV/2 instrument. NOAA and CPC have continued to monitor ozone amounts from subsequent SBUV/2 instruments onboard the polar orbiting satellites NOAA-11, NOAA-14 and currently NOAA-16. Another SBUV/2 instrument will be onboard the NOAA-M satellite scheduled to be launched in late spring 2002.
  CPC product collage  
 


Besides creating analyses of total ozone from the current NOAA satellite and posting these analyses on the internet, CPC continually monitors measured ozone amounts for accuracy and looks for possible indications of instrument degradation. As part of the continuing effort to better understand ozone depletion, the CPC has worked to develop the ozone observations from each satellite into a continuous time series removing biases or offsets from each satellite's instrument. The result is a high quality data set usable to derive trends with respect to total ozone.

Comparison with ground based observations of total ozone from Dobson instruments, ground-based (LIDAR) and satellite-based instruments (SAGE, HALOE) provides assurance that SBUV/2 ozone data are of the highest quality.

Following each hemisphere's winter/spring season since 1991, the CPC has published a Hemispheric Winter Bulletin. This report summarizes NOAA's observations and explains the stratospheric ozone depletion processes which occurred during the year in context with the historical record.

The CPC displays many products via the world wide web. In addition to total ozone measurements from the SBUV/2 instrument, Antarctic ozone hole size estimates are also calculated with SBUV/2 data from September through December. The CPC has monitored heights and temperatures of the stratosphere since the 1960's and now provides these products on the internet with commentary of how the ozone fields are linked with the thermal and dynamic structure of the stratosphere.

 

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http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov/action/cpc.htm
Last updated on 20 March 2008 by Karin.L.Gleason@noaa.gov