Advances in SAM II, SAGE, SAGE II and SAGE III Analysis and Products

The Stratospheric Aerosol Measurement (SAM II) and Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment series of instruments span the period from 1978 to 2005 in which they provided seminal measurements of stratospheric ozone and aerosol that remain a key foundation of climate change studies. Herein, we discuss recent and on-going developments related to improvements in the data products for all four instruments. These include a complete update of SAGE I and SAM II to include processing tools developed for SAGE II and SAGE III as well as improvements to water vapor and UTLS ozone in SAGE II v6.3, and SAGE III v4 features such as the release of water vapor profile data. SAGE I and SAM II processing algorithms have not been updated since the mid-1980s. The historical version of SAGE I had a well-known altitude registration issue that has been significantly mitigated in the new version (v6). SAM II, which consists of only high latitude 1-micron aerosol extinction coefficient data is being updated so that it can be used to link the altitude registration of SAGE I and SAGE II, which is important for interpreting ozone changes observed by the two instruments, as well as linking the clean periods (low aerosol loading) between the late 1970s and those observed in the late 1980s and in the 2000s.