Newly-Developed NOAA Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) Climate Data Records and Its Climate Applications

NOAA/NESDIS has been developing consistent, homogenous, well-documented radiance fundamental climate data record (FCDR) and stratospheric temperature climate data records (TCDR) from 28-year (1978-2006) stratospheric sounding unit (SSU) observations for climate applications. This study presents our recent efforts of recalibrating historic SSU datasets towards climate data records in the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) of NOAA supported by the NOAA Scientific Data Stewardship (SDS) program. First, the strategy and methods will be presented, including 1) removing CO2 cell leaking effects and 2) CO2 concentration-increasing effects from the SSU observations to make the corrected SSU brightness temperature corresponding to a stable and consistent weighting function; 3) limb adjustment; 4) removing diurnal sampling biases in the SSU satellite observations due to satellite orbital drift; and 5) statistical merge of SSU observations from different satellites.

In the second part of this presentation, we will use this newly-developed SSU CDRs to study long-term stratospheric temperature variation. Specific questions addressed are: What is the decadal variability of stratospheric temperature? How does it vertically vary revealed by the SSU different channels? How is it spatially distributed along with different climate regions? Trend comparison with previous studies and trend consistency check among different datasets will also be discussed.

Thirdly, based on our experiences of developing SSU CDRs, the issues and challenges of developing CDRs from NOAA operational satellite measurements will be discussed.