The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment: Early Results
Abstract
The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment is a key part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS). SAGE III's role within EOS is to provide high resolution, vertical profiles of atmospheric constituents including ozone, aerosol, water vapor and temperature from the middle troposphere through the stratosphere that are crucial to understanding climate change. The instrument was launched on a Russian Meteor-3M spacecraft on December 10, 2001 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Routine measurements began in late February 2002. Retrieval results for the different species from both solar and lunar occultation measurements will also be shown with comparison satellite observations from SAGE II, HALOE, and POAM III. These initial results show that, despite several instrument and platform related problems during the early operational period, the instrument is performing well. These results include data products that were not a part of previous SAGE missions such as using the oxygen A band to retrieve temperature and pressure and the use of lunar occultation to derive profiles of ozone, NO2, and NO3.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002AGUFM.A71D0127T
- Keywords:
-
- 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345;
- 4801);
- 0340 Middle atmosphere: composition and chemistry;
- 0394 Instruments and techniques