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About GOME-2   The GOME-2 instrument scans across the satellite track. Each scan back and forth takes just six seconds; therefore, with a scan-width of 1920-kilometres, global coverage can be achieved within one day. The data collected by GOME-2 provides vertical profiles or total column amounts for each of the gases (ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, other trace gases) and ultraviolet radiation. These profiles are representative of the lowermost 50 kilometres of the Earth's atmosphere.
As with the data being received by GOME on ERS-2, these data are crucial for monitoring stratospheric ozone and atmospheric pollutants to keep a check on the health of the Earth's atmosphere. However, GOME-2 is more advanced than GOME as it observes four times smaller ground pixels (80 km x 40 km), it has better polarisation and the calibration processes have been improved.  Underneath the thermal insulation cover there is a complex set of telescopes and prisms through which incoming light is initially separated into four main bandwidths. Different gases in the atmosphere absorb different wavelengths of light. The GOME-2 spectrometer is used to split the light into different wavelengths to reveal absorption lines, which correspond to certain gases present the observed sample. GOME-2 covers the 240-790 nm wavelength regions, that is wavelengths covering ultraviolet and visible light.  Carried on MetOp, the GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2) is a scanning spectrometer that captures light reflected from the Earth's surface and atmosphere. The spectrometer splits the light into its spectral components to map concentrations of atmospheric ozone as well as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, other trace gases and ultraviolet radiation. Last update: 28 June 2006 |