Long-term evolution and seasonal modulation of methanol above Jungfraujoch (46.5°N, 8.0°E): Optimisation of the retrieval strategy, comparison with model and independent observations

Methanol (CH3OH) is the second most abundant organic compound in the Earth’s atmosphere after methane. In this work, we present the first long-term time series of methanol total, lower tropospheric and upper tropospheric-lower stratospheric partial columns derived from the analysis of high resolution Fourier transform infrared solar spectra recorded at the Jungfraujoch station (46.5°N, 3580 m a.s.l.). The retrieval of methanol is very challenging due to strong absorptions of ozone in the region of the selected 8 band of CH3OH. Two wide spectral intervals have been defined and adjusted in order to maximize the information content. Methanol does not exhibit a significant trend over the 1995-2012 time period, but a strong seasonal modulation characterized by maximum values and variability in June-July, minimum columns in winter and a peak-to-peak amplitude of 130 %. In situ measurements performed at the Jungfraujoch and ACE-FTS occultations give similar results for the methanol seasonal variation. The total and lower tropospheric columns are also compared with IMAGESv2 model simulations. There is no systematic bias between the observations and IMAGESv2 but the model underestimates the peak-to-peak amplitude of the seasonal modulations.