MIPAS: 10 years of spectroscopic measurements for investigating atmospheric composition

The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) aboard the European satellite ENVISAT is a limb sounder measuring the thermal emission of atmospheric trace gases and particles between 4.15 and 14.6 μwavelength with high spectral resolution. Due to the special limb viewing geometry MIPAS yields global coverage of atmospheric parameters from pole to pole every day since March 2002. The main altitude range detected covers the upper troposphere, the stratosphere and the lower mesosphere when using the nominal measurement mode. MIPAS data have been applied to retrieve operationally vertical profiles of the temperature and the six key species H2O, O3, CH4, N2O, HNO3 and NO2. In addition a large number of other parameters have been derived with none-operational research algorithms. Many scientific results have already been published in various peer-reviewed journals. In this only a selection of more recent results will be presented including the “ozone hole” in the Arctic 2010/2011, polluti...