The annual Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) Science Team Meeting was held as a hybrid event hosted at NASA Langley Research Center on October 22 and 23, with over 50 participants. Nearly 30 technical presentations were given on topics ranging from the SAGE III/ISS mission and data product status, to research findings, plans and preliminary results utilizing SAGE products, to current and future members of the international constellation for stratospheric and upper tropospheric composition observations, to data assimilation systems (past, present and future), and to ground-based correlative measurements overlapping SAGE. This was the first Science Team Meeting for the cohort of Principal Investigator-led teams selected under the 3rd ROSES call targeting SAGE-like science, with at least 4 PIs new to the Science Team. One example of data usage was given by Dr. E. Knowland (MSU/GSFC-GMAO) regarding continuing a climate record of stratospheric water vapor (SWV) after the Aura MLS mission. She highlighted results from work as a PI during the 2nd Science Team cohort that made use of the GMAO Constituent data assimilation system (CoDAS) when it was fed SAGE III/ISS SWV observations. Key findings were:
- SAGE III/ISS stratospheric water vapor (SWV) assimilation improves SWV (R ≥ 0.48) relative to Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment-Fourier Transform Spectrometer compared to chemistry only (R ≥ 0.28)
- Assimilated SAGE III/ISS SWV captures broad, subpolar features like the tropical tape recorder, but is less able to capture isolated events
- SAGE III/ISS SWV profiles can thus continue the climate data record of Aura MLS, albeit with less coverage and fine-scale fidelity
These results lend confidence that SAGE III/ISS could serve as a bridge to future SWV observations after Aura MLS.
The mission looks forward to learning of new scientific advancements at the next annual meeting in 2025.
Credits: NASA
