Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.5194/amt-18-7387-2025

Publication Title

Atmospheric Measurment Techniques

Volume

18

Issue

23

Pages

7387-7403

Abstract

The Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) uses limb geometry to measure transmittance spectra of Earth's atmosphere by solar occultation. Line-of-sight wind speeds can be derived via Doppler shifts of molecular lines in infrared spectra. The wind look direction angles relative to geodetic north are derived from geometry. We validate the new ACE version 5.3 (v.5.3) line-of-sight winds with MIGHTI and meteor radar vector wind observations and find a -15 m s-¹ (+15 m s-¹) sunrise (sunset) shift above 80 km. We also compare line-of-sight winds from ACE-FTS v.5.2 and v.5.3 with vector winds from the MERRA-2, HWM14, and WACCM-X models. A -15 to -20 m s-¹ (+15 to +20 m s-¹) sunrise (sunset) bias persists in v.5.3 winds above 80 km but decreases to less than -5 m s-¹ (+5 m s-¹) below 50 km. The v.5.3 wind speed profiles have improved relative to v.5.2 at all altitudes. Over 20 years of ACE wind speeds can be used to test atmospheric models.

Rights

© Authors 2025.

This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "ACE v.5.2 and v.5.3 wind data can be found on the SCISAT webpage (https://databace.scisat.ca, last access: 27 October 2025) within the Level 2 Data."

Original Publication Citation

Wyatt, M., Bernath, P. F., Boone, C., Lavy, L., & Johnson, R. (2025). Atmospheric chemistry experiment (ACE) v.5.3 winds: Validation and model comparisons. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 18(23), 7387-7403. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-7387-2025

ORCID

0009-0008-8157-7667 (Wyatt), 0000-0002-1255-396X (Bernath), 0000-0003-4572-8612 (Lavy)

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