MIPAS V8 processing with HPC facilities

Comparison between water vapour from MIPAS nominal mode retrieval and from a ground based microwave instrument at Table Mountain (CA, USA). Relative differences are shown for MIPAS V5 (green), MIPAS V8 standard product (red) and a special V8 product for the upper part of the measurement range (black).

The retrieval of vertical gas profiles in the atmosphere from MIPAS V8 L1b data was performed partly with an in-house compute cluster at KIT-IMK, and partly with the high performance computing (HPC) facilities of the High Performance Computing Center in Stuttgart (HLRS). The XC40 (Hazel Hen) and its successor HPE Apollo (Hawk) were used in the frame of a Bundesprojekt (grant MIPAS_V7). These machines were mainly used to perform retrievals with computationally expensive non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) calculations. Most of the related processing work was done in close collaboration between the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) in Granada, Spain and KIT-IMK. Among the gases processed at the HPC machines were H₂O, CO, NO, NO₂. The progress in the quality of the V8 water vapour data product is demonstrated in the Figure.

A presentation of some results for H₂O and the other species can be found here.