Performance simulations for a spaceborne ozone lidar mission

The future range resolved spaceborne ozone differential absorption lidar (SODIAL) is expected to fill the current observation gap, especially in areas where in-situ observation and passive remote sensing are difficult. The spaceborne ozone lidar preparatory research mission (SOLPRM) proposed by the State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, People's Republic of China, aims to develop the SODIAL. This study globally simulated and estimated the observational performance of SODIAL through MERRA-2, CALIPSO, and GOME-2 satellite data. The results show that 72.44% of the measurement errors are less than 30% at 5 km and only 0.31% of the monthly average measurement errors are greater than 10% at 20 km in the 1°× 1° grid under the conditions of 350 km orbital altitude, 5W average transmission power, 2 m telescope diameter, 1 km vertical resolution and 140 km horizontal resolution. The impact of frequency stability and broadening for the emitted laser is less than 2% on the performance of SODIAL. The measurement error caused by the variation of absorption cross-section with temperature can reach 5%. The variation of aerosol concentration, lidar ratio, and Angstrom exponent will lead to the variation of measurement error in the range of 5%-50%, which mainly appears in the lower troposphere, especially in the planetary boundary layer. Due to the shorter wavelength of SODIAL, the variation in measurement error is usually less than 0.3% below 20 km due to changes in surface reflectance. This study is of guiding significance for the development of spaceborne ozone lidar.