SAF Official Service Name

Satellite Application Facility on Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring (O3M SAF)

O3M SAF website

SAF Objectives

The O3M SAF produces, archives, validates and disseminates ozone and atmospheric chemistry products, to support the services of the EUMETSAT Member States in weather forecasting, as well as monitoring of ozone depletion, air quality and surface UV radiation.

In addition, these products contribute to the implementation of the EUMETSAT strategy in environmental monitoring of the atmosphere. This is achieved at the European level by contributing to the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) activities, and in the global scale by implementing the global observations of the key atmospheric parameters, as recommended by the Integrated Global Atmospheric Chemistry Observations Theme (IGACO) within the IGOS framework.

SAF Leader and Consortium

Leading Entity
	Ilmatieteen Laitos (FMI), Finland

Consortium Members
	Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany		Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Germany		Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), The Netherlands
	Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Denmark		Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS), Greece		Météo-France (M-F), France
	Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece		Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI), Belgium		Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Belgium
	Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), France

SAF Phases

Development Phase: June 1997–June 2002
Extended Development Phase: June 2002–February 2007
Continuous Development and Operations Phase: March 2007–February 2012
Second Continuous Development and Operations Phase: March 2012–February 2017

SAF input satellite data

The following satellite data sources are used to generate O3M SAF products:

• Metop (GOME-2, HIRS, AVHRR, IASI)
• NOAA (AVHRR)

SAF products

The products provided by the O3M SAF are parameters of the atmospheric trace gases, aerosols and surface UV radiation. They are produced either in near-real time (NRT, three hours from sensing) or offline (15 days from sensing). See the Product Navigator for detailed information on the O3M SAF products.

The O3MSAF provides also some climatological datasets.

SAF topology and architecture

The O3M SAF maintains four operations centres and two archives. The quality of the products is monitored by dedicated validation centres.

• FMI: processing and archiving of HIRS ozone products and offline UV products, archiving of ozone profile and aerosol products, validation of offline UV products.
• DLR: processing and archiving of total ozone and trace gas products.
• KNMI: processing of ozone profile products, validation of ozone distribution by data assimilation.
• DMI: processing of NRT UV products.
• HNMS and AUTH: validation of total ozone products.
• KMI: validation of ozone profiles by balloon soundings, validation of aerosol products.
• DWD: validation of ozone profiles by lidar and microwave radiometer.

SAF user community

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF); National Weather Services; World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and scientific research on ozone trace gases, aerosols and surface UV radiation.