A049-03
Validation of SAGE III/ISS water vapor data and implications for a continued middle atmosphere water vapor data record

Tuesday, 8 December 2020: 10:38
Virtual
Sean M Davis1, Robert Damadeo2, Karen Hepler Rosenlof1, Mijeong Park3, David E Flittner2, William John Randel4, Ghassan Taha5, David Huber6, Dale F Hurst7, Holger Voemel8 and Henry B Selkirk9, (1)NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (3)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)Universities Space Research Association, NASA/code 614, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Hampton, Hampton, VA, United States, (7)Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Earth Observing Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (9)GESTAR, Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment instrument on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) has been retrieving vertical profiles of upper tropospheric to stratospheric water vapor from solar occultation measurements since June 2017. In this presentation, we evaluate the initial SAGE III/ISS version 5.1 water vapor measurements through intercomparison with independent satellite- and balloon-based measurements, and discuss the implications for multi-decadal merged data records such as the Stratospheric Water and OzOne Satellite Homogenized (SWOOSH) data set. We demonstrate that after data impacted by retrieval instability and aerosol/cloud-related interference are screened out, SAGE III/ISS WV has a consistent dry bias throughout the stratosphere of ~10 % (~0.5 ppmv) compared to the other satellite and balloon-based measurements. This bias can be straightforwardly removed in order to include SAGE III/ISS data in a merged record such as SWOOSH. Furthermore, because SAGE III/ISS achieves near-global latitudinal coverage in a month, we show that it is able to capture the dominant modes of variability in stratospheric water vapor such as the tropical tape recorder and variability associated with the Asian Summer Monsoon. Finally, we will discuss the implications of SAGE III/ISS data quality in the context of possible future changes to middle atmosphere satellite water vapor data availability (e.g., the loss of Aura MLS) for merged data records such as SWOOSH.
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