In order to fully characterise MIPAS products, the following additional informations are needed, other than the VCM of the retrieved profiles.

Averaging Kernels

In order to perform the comparison of measurements of the same quantity obtained from different instruments we have to take into account the different characteristics of the observing systems. The different measurements that are compared may have:

Therefore the differences observed in the comparison are not only due to measurement errors, but also to different representations of the retrieved profiles. As a consequence the alone variance covariance matrix of the retrieved profiles does not provide a sufficient information to perform a correct comparison between independent measurements. In addition to error information it is necessary to provide a description of how the observing system modifies the true state of the atmosphere. This information is included in the averaging kernel matrix.

Click here to download the Averaging Kernel Matrices of MIPAS for Near Real Time products.  
Click here to download a document describing the Averaging Kernel Matrices of MIPAS for Near Real Time products.  
    
Click here to download the Averaging Kernel Matrices of MIPAS for Off-line products. 
Click here to download a document describing the Averaging Kernel Matrices of MIPAS for Off-line products.

Click here to download the Averaging Kernel Matrices of MIPAS for the non-target species: CFC-11, ClONO₂, N₂O₅, CFC-12.

Click here to download the profiles corresponding to the atmosphere status for which the Averaging Kernel Matrices have been calculated.
The file IG_GEO.DAT contains the altitude grid where the profiles are represented.
Four directories are provided, one for each season. In each directory the files IG_*.DAT  contain the  profiles  for each species (specified by the file name) and each latitude band (specified within the file).
Please refer to the documents above for explanation on their use.

Systematic Errors 

The main error sources that affect the accuracy of the retrieved profiles are:
noise error, due to the mapping of radiometric noise in the retrieved profiles;
temperature error, which maps into VMR retrieved profiles;
systematic error, due to incorrect input parameters.
 
The noise error and the temperature error are obtainable by the level 2 products distributed by ESA. The systematic errors have been estimated by Oxford University and are downloadable here for the near real time products and here for the off-line products.
For a description of the error analysis performed by Oxford University we refer to the website: http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/group/mipas/err/.

In order to make an accurate estimation of the pT error propagation in VMR retrievals it is necessary to propagate the variance-covariance matrix of pT retrieval according to the following formula:
where E is the pT error propagation matrix downloadable here for all the species.