Preflight Evaluation of the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument with Nadir and Limb Modes (EMI-NL) Based on Measurements of Standard NO2 Sample Gas

Hyperspectral observations are used to retrieve high-resolution horizontal distribution and vertical profiles of trace gases (O3, NO2, HCHO, and SO2), thereby playing a vital role in monitoring the spatio-temporal distribution and transportation of atmospheric pollutants. These observations reflect air quality changes on global and regional scales, including China, thereby elucidating the impacts of anthropogenic and natural emissions on atmospheric composition and global climate change. The DaQi 02 (DQ02) satellite carries the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument with Nadir and Limb modes (EMI-NL) onboard, which will simultaneously perform nadir and limb measurements of high-resolution ultraviolet and visible solar scattered light in the nadir and limb directions. Combined with the absorption of different trace gases in this wavelength band, this information can provide high-resolution horizontal and vertical distributions of trace gases. We examined the spectral measuring ability and instrument characteristics of both modules of EMI-NL by measuring different light sources and concentrations of the NO2 sample gas. In the nadir module test, when the NO2 sample gas concentration was 198 ppm and 513 ppm with scattered sunlight as the light source, the average relative errors of spatial pixels were 4.02% and 3.64%, respectively. At the NO2 sample gas concentration of 198 ppm with the integrating sphere as the light source, the average relative error of spatial pixels was −2.26%. In the limb module test, when the NO2 sample gas concentration was 198 ppm and 1000 ppm with the tungsten halogen lamp as the light source, the average relative errors of spatial pixels were −3.07% and 8.32%, respectively. When the NO2 sample gas concentration was 198 ppm and 1000 ppm with the integrating sphere as the light source, the spatial pixel average errors were −3.5% and 8.06%, respectively. The retrieved NO2 slant column density between different spatial pixels exhibited notable inconsistency in both modules, which could be used to estimate the stripe of spatial dimension. These results confirm the ability of EMI-NL to provide accurate spaceborne monitoring of NO2 globally.