Global Long-Term MIPAS Processing

The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) is a Fourier transform mid-infrared limb scanning high resolution spectrometer for measurement of more than 30 atmospheric trace species related to atmospheric chemistry and global change. At the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK), measured radiance spectra are used for retrieval of altitude-resolved profiles of abundances of different trace species of the atmosphere (H2O, O3, N2O, CH4, NO2, HNO3, NO, CO, CFC-11, CFC-12, HCFC-22, CFC-113, HCFC-142b, H2O2, HDO, ClONO2, N2O5, HO2NO2, HOCl, ClO, C2H6, SF6, NH3, OCS, HCN, HCOOH, PAN, acetone, CH3CN, and others). These 4-D trace gas distributions are used for the assessment of (a) stratospheric ozone chemistry (b) stratospheric cloud physics and heterogeneous chemistry (c) tropospheric stratospheric exchange (d) intercontinental transport of pollutants in the upper troposphere (e) mesospheric stratospheric exchange (f) effects of solar proton events on stratospheric chemistry. While data analysis strategy developed at IMK over the last fifteen years has proven successful for atmospheric case studies of limited spatial and temporal coverage, numerous research topics require either a complete global data set, or the retrieval of many different species, or both. These requirements cannot be fulfilled by IMK’s limited computational resources. The opportunity to process major parts of the data on the XC supercomputers therefore offers a unique chance to improve not only the quantity of processed data but also the quality, because in the same time more species can be processed, which leads to a more thorough picture of middle atmosphere chemistry. After the successful transfer of the core processing tools to the XC1/XC2 several projects have already been processed partly on these supercomputers. Examples of projects are given and the process of tool transfer and adaptation is discussed as well as the current performance and remaining problems and potential sources for further optimization.