Background

The pressing issues of air quality and global warming are fundamentally determined by the amount of aerosols and trace gasses in the atmosphere. Therefore their abundances are measured from ground- and space-based platforms. Several existing and upcoming earth observation (EO) satellite missions retrieve the column amount of atmospheric trace gasses such as O3, NO2, SO2, HCHO, CO2, CH4, H2O, etc. Several of them are EUMETSAT Copernicus Atmospheric Composition missions to be supported within this project. 

In order to ensure the quality of these satellite products, they need to be validated against independent measurements. The backbone of satellite validation efforts is in general data coming from well-maintained ground-based remote sensing networks such as the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) applying fourier transform spectroscopy in the infrared for green house gases retrievals, or the Pandonia Global Network (PGN) for reactive trace gas retrievals using Pandora spectrometer systems (Pandora). At present the PGN consists of more than 170 official sites globally  and provides Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM), which have been identified by EUMETSAT’s Scientific Roadmap as to fit well and to be needed for their Cal/Val activities. 

The PGN is currently supported for EO Cal/Val activities by ESA. PanAMA will provide complementary scientific and engineering activities to those already covered, thus supporting further development of the capabilities and additional operational support of PGN tailored for Copernicus missions operated by EUMETSAT.