A Distributed Modular Data Processing Chain Applied to Simulated Satellite Ozone Observations

• Main Authors: Marco Gai, Flavio Barbara, Simone Ceccherini, Ugo Cortesi, Samuele Del Bianco, Cecilia Tirelli, Nicola Zoppetti, Claudio Belotti, Bruno Canessa, Vincenzo Farruggia, Andrea Masini, Arno Keppens, Jean-Christopher Lambert, Antti Arola, Antti Lipponen, Olaf Tuinder
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Remote Sensing
• Subjects: distributed data processing; simulated satellite measurements; software prototype; geo-database
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/2/210

Remote sensing of the atmospheric composition from current and future satellites, such as the Sentinel missions of the Copernicus programme, yields an unprecedented amount of data to monitor air quality, ozone, UV radiation and other climate variables. Hence, full exploitation of the growing wealth of information delivered by spaceborne observing systems requires addressing the technological challenges for developing new strategies and tools that are capable to deal with these huge data volumes. The H2020 AURORA (Advanced Ultraviolet Radiation and Ozone Retrieval for Applications) project investigated a novel approach for synergistic use of ozone profile measurements acquired at different frequencies (ultraviolet, visible, thermal infrared) by sensors onboard Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites in the framework of the Copernicus Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 missions. This paper outlines the main features of the technological infrastructure, designed and developed to support the AURORA data processing chain as a distributed data processing and describes in detail the key components of the infrastructure and the software prototype. The latter demonstrates the technical feasibility of the automatic execution of the full processing chain with simulated data. The Data Processing Chain (DPC) presented in this work thus replicates a processing system that, starting from the operational satellite retrievals, carries out their fusion and results in the assimilation of the fused products. These consist in ozone vertical profiles from which further modules of the chain deliver tropospheric ozone and UV radiation at the Earth’s surface. The conclusions highlight the relevance of this novel approach to the synergistic use of operational satellite data and underline that the infrastructure uses general-purpose technologies and is open for applications in different contexts.