Validation of SAGE III/ISS Solar Occultation Ozone Products With Correlative...

Wang, R., R. Damadeo, D. Flittner, N. Kramarova, G. Taha, S. Davis, A. M. Thompson, S. Strahan, Y. Wang, L. Froidevaux, D. Degenstein, A. Bourassa, W. Steinbrecht, K. Walker, R. Querel, T. Leblanc, S. Godin-Beekmann, D. Hurst, and E. Hall (2020), Validation of SAGE III/ISS Solar Occultation Ozone Products With Correlative Satellite and Ground‐Based Measurements, J. Geophys. Res., 125, doi:10.1029/2020JD032430.
Abstract: 

The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) was launched on 19 February 2017 and began routine operation in June 2017. The first 2 years of SAGE III/ISS (v5.1) solar occultation ozone data were evaluated by using correlative satellite and ground‐based measurements. Among the three (MES, AO3, and MLR) SAGE III/ISS retrieved solar ozone products, AO3 ozone shows the smallest bias and best precision, with mean biases less than 5% for altitudes ~15–55 km in the midlatitudes and ~20–55 km in the tropics. In the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere, AO3 ozone shows high biases that increase with decreasing altitudes and reach ~10% near the tropopause. Preliminary studies indicate that those high biases primarily result from the contributions of the oxygen dimer (O4) not being appropriately removed within the ozone channel. The precision of AO3 ozone is estimated to be ~3% for altitudes between 20 and 40 km. It degrades to ~10–15% in the lower mesosphere (~55 km) and ~20–30% near the tropopause. There could be an altitude registration error of ~100 m in the SAGE III/ISS auxiliary temperature and pressure profiles. This, however, does not affect retrieved ozone profiles in native number density on geometric altitude coordinates. In the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere (~40–55 km), the SAGE III/ISS (and SAGE II) retrieved ozone values show sunrise/sunset differences of ~5–8%, which are almost twice as large as what was observed by other satellites or model predictions. This feature needs further study.

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Mission: 
SAGE III/ISS