Long-term, consistent, and homogeneous temperature observations in the stratosphere are important component of global change. Recently, NOAA Center of Satellite Research and Applications developed and released a fully-documented, publicly-accessible, well-merged long-term stratospheric temperature dataset from 27-year Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) measurements. This newly-developed stratospheric temperature dataset from SSU is composed of nadir-like, gridded brightness temperatures that correspond to identical weighting functions and a fixed local observation time. The 27-year reprocessed SSU data records comprise global pentad layer temperatures, with grid resolution of 2.50 latitudes by 2.50 longitudes, of the mid-stratosphere (TMS), upper-stratosphere (TUS), and top-stratosphere (TTS), which correspond to the three SSU channel observations.

We briefly introduce the issues of original SSU observations, and the data processing procedures that make original SSU observations suitable for climate study. The comparison of the SSU stratospheric temperatures with long-term ground-based lidar and GPS RO measurements are included. Secondly, a study of long-term stratospheric temperature change based on this newly-developed SSU dataset will be conducted, including the trend and variability of the stratospheric temperature. This dataset provides the community new observations to advance our understanding on the temperature change in the stratosphere.