• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.189-198
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• 2022

In this present study, we investigated the effect of the offset correction factor calculation method on the sulfur dioxide (SO₂) column density in the SO₂ retrieval algorithm of the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) launched in February 2020. The GEMS operational SO₂ retrieval algorithm is the Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) - Principal Component Analysis (PCA) Hybrid algorithm. In the GEMS Hybrid algorithm, the offset correction process is essential to correct the absorption effect of ozone appearing in the SO₂ slant column density (SCD) obtained after spectral fitting using DOAS. Since the SO₂ column density may depend on the conditions for calculating the offset correction factor, it is necessary to apply an appropriate offset correction value. In this present study, the offset correction values were calculated for days with many cloud pixels and few cloud pixels, respectively. And a comparison of the SO₂ column density retrieved by applying each offset correction factor to the GEMS operational SO₂ retrieval algorithm was performed. When the offset correction value was calculated using radiance data of GEMS on a day with many cloud pixels was used, the standard deviation of the SO₂ column density around India and the Korean Peninsula, which are the edges of the GEMS observation area, was 1.27 DU, and 0.58 DU, respectively. And around Hong Kong, where there were many cloud pixels, the SO₂ standard deviation was 0.77 DU. On the other hand, when the offset correction value calculated using the GEMS data on the day with few cloud pixels was used, the standard deviation of the SO₂ column density slightly decreased around India (0.72 DU), Korean Peninsula (0.38 DU), and Hong Kong (0.44 DU). We found that the SO₂ retrieval was relatively stable compared to the SO₂ retrieval case using the offset correction value on the day with many cloud pixels. Accordingly, to minimize the uncertainty of the GEMS SO₂ retrieval algorithm and to obtain a stable retrieval, it is necessary to calculate the offset correction factor under appropriate conditions.