GOME AND SCIAMACHY GLOBAL WATER VAPOUR COLUMNS

Global water vapour total column amounts have been derived from measurements of the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on ERS-2 and the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY) on-board the European environmental satellite ENVISAT. For this purpose, the Air Mass Corrected Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (AMC-DOAS) approach has been applied to GOME and SCIAMACHY nadir measurements in the spectral region around 700 nm. A possible combination of the GOME and SCIAMACHY data would be the first step to a new long-term water vapour climatology as the combined GOME and SCIAMACHY time series covers already now more than 10 years. A further extension by future SCIAMACHY data and additional measurements from the GOME-2 instruments on the Metop satellites can be expected.