Introduction
Marschals (Millimetre-wave Airborne Receivers for Spectroscopic CHaracterisation in Atmospheric Limb Sounding), is an heterodyne spectrometer for the measurement of high resolution spectra of the atmospheric emission in the millimeter and submillimeter region with limb sounding geometry. Marschals has been developed by an European consortium led by RAL (Rutherford and Appleton Laboratories) under an ESA (European Space Agency) contract and flight on board of the M-55 Russian aircraft (Geophysica) up to an altitude of 21 km.
The major objective of MARSCHALS is to test the measurement capabilities of the planned MASTER (Millimetre-wave Acquisition for Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchange Research) instrument with real observations from a stratospheric platform in order to verify the extent of millimetre-wave advantages and to validate the spectro-radiometric requirements of MASTER. As a matter of fact, theoretical simulations indicate that MASTER, a millimeter-wave heterodyne spectrometer, is the only instrument that can satisfactory meet the challenging requirements for UTLS (Upper Troposphere / Lower Stratosphere) studies considered in the planned ACECHEM (Atmospheric Composition Explorer for CHEMistry and climate) ESA Earth Explorer Mission, but the full measurement capabilities of MASTER have not yet been demonstrated with real instruments.
The utilzation of MARSCHALS on a stratospheric aircraft is only a first step of a program that may also see in future its integration on a balloon-borne platform.
In this framework, following the ESA announcement of opportunity AO/1-4087/02/NL/MM a team led by Institute of Applied Physics “Nello Carrara” (IFAC-CNR) has undertaken the study “The scientific analysis of limb sounding observations of the upper troposphere” for the development, validation and exploitation of a code for the Level 2 (L2) analysis of the measurements of Marschals.
This study was successfully finished at the end of 2007.
This web site is devoted to the description of this study; it is arranged in pages as in the following (use the toolbar on the left to navigate among the pages):
| Overview |
This page contains a brief introduction about the overall MARSCHALS project; |
| Project |
This page contains a description of the tasks related to the Level2 activities of the MARSCHALS project; |
| Team |
In this page the partners of the MARSCHALS L2b project are listed and external links to their web-sites are provided; |
| Results |
In this page the most significant results of the MARSCHALS L2 study are presented |
| Adaptation for REFIR data |
This page contains a description of changes made to adapt the MARSCHALS codes for the analysis of NADIR sounding data such as that of REFIR instrument |
| Publications and Presentations |
In this page the presentations about the topics of the study and the publications with the results of the Level 2b activities are introduced |
| Documents |
In this page the documents (e.g. Technical notes) originated during the study are listed |