Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) II Version 7.0 Aerosol, O3, NO2 and H2O Profiles in binary format

SAGE2_AEROSOL_O3_NO2_H2O_BINARY_V7.0 is the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) II Version 7.0 Aerosol, O3, NO2 and H2O Profiles data set in the SAGE II native binary format. It contains aerosol extinction, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and water vapor profiles. Data collection for this data set is complete.

Over the long 21-year mission, the spacecraft experienced episodic anomalies in the power system. These anomalies were usually followed by a period where the occultation events were of limited duration. These so-called short events may have had an insufficient number of exoatmospheric scans of the solar disk precluding an accurate determination of the solar limb darkening curve and the scan mirror relative reflectivity. In version 7.0, these events, a total of 4900, were dropped so that the data users no longer needed to filter out those events. Further, there were approximately 150 events that did not complete processing in earlier versions that were successfully processed in this version. The net result was that there were more usable profiles in v7.0 than in previous versions.

SAGE II was a payload installed aboard the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), which was launched on October 5, 1984, from NASA Space Shuttle Flight 41-G. The SAGE II instrument was a multi-channel spectral radiometer that measured the attenuation of solar radiation at seven wavelengths as they passed through the Earth's atmosphere during the spacecraft's sunrise and sunset events. In one day’s time, the ERBS spacecraft encountered approximately fifteen sunrise and fifteen sunset events. The SAGE II instrument captured solar radiation data for each event. The data span was a vertical distance from about 140 kilometers to the horizon or a cloud top. The ground-track slew distance during data capture varied directly with the duration of the event. Event duration varied with the beta angle of the event - the larger the absolute beta angle, the longer the event. SAGE II continued the SAGE measurements of stratospheric ozone from 1984-2005. After nearly 21 years, the SAGE II Instrument on the ERBS platform was powered off on 22 August, 2005.