The principal advantage of the limb/nadir matching technique is that it uses a stratospheric column measured at the right place at the right time with the same instrument. It therefore solves all the problems of the reference sector method as discussed in the section on that subject, namely:

• the uncertainty introduced into the results,
• the low bias arising from the presence of small quantities of tropospheric NO₂, and
• the fact that no data can be produced over the reference region (where tropospheric NO₂ is zero by definition).