Since June 2017, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III instrument on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) has been providing vertical profiles of upper tropospheric to stratospheric water vapor (SWV) retrieved from solar occultation transmission measurements. The goal of this study is to evaluate the publicly released SAGE III/ISS beta version 5.1 WV retrieval through intercomparison with independent satellite‐ and balloon‐based measurements, and to present recommendations for SAGE III/ISS data quality screening criteria. Overall, we find that SAGE III/ISS provides high quality water vapor measurements. Low quality profiles are predominately due to retrieval instabilities in the upper stratosphere that cause step‐like changes in the profile, and aerosol/cloud‐related interferences (below ∼20 km). Above 35 km, the retrieved uncertainty and noise in the data rapidly grow with increasing altitude due to relatively low extinction signal from water vapor. Below the tropopause, retrieved uncertainty increases with decreasing altitude due to enhanced molecular scattering and aerosol extinction. After screening low‐quality data using the procedures described herein, SAGE III/ISS WV is shown to be in good agreement with independent satellite and balloon‐based measurements. From 20 to 40 km, SAGE III/ISS WV v5.1 data exhibit a bias of 0.0 to −0.5 ppmv (∼10%) relative to the independent data, depending on the instrument and altitude. Despite its status as a beta version, the level of SAGE III/ISS WV agreement with independent data is similar to previous SAGE instruments, and therefore the data are suitable for scientific studies of SWV.

The NASA/Smithsonian Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO; tempo.si.edu) satellite instrument will measure atmospheric pollution and much more over Greater North America at high temporal resolution (hourly or better in daylight, with selected observations at 10 minute or better sampling) and high spatial resolution (10 km(2) at the center of the field of regard). It will measure ozone (O-3) profiles (including boundary layer O-3), and columns of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrous acid (HNO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), formaldehyde (H2CO), glyoxal (C2H2O2), water vapor (H2O), bromine oxide (BrO), iodine oxide (IO), chlorine dioxide (OClO), as well as clouds and aerosols, foliage properties, and ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation. The instrument has been delivered and is awaiting spacecraft integration and launch in 2022. This talk describes a selection of TEMPO applications based on the TEMPO Green Paper living document (http://tempo.si.edu/publications.html). Applications to air quality and health will be summarized. Other applications presented include: biomass burning and O-3 production; aerosol products including synergy with GOES infrared measurements; lightning NOx; soil NOx and fertilizer application; crop and forest damage from O-3; chlorophyll and primary productivity; foliage studies; halogens in coastal and lake regions; ship tracks and drilling platform plumes; water vapor studies including atmospheric rivers, hurricanes, and corn sweat; volcanic emissions; air pollution and economic evolution; high-resolution pollution versus traffic patterns; tidal effects on estuarine circulation and outflow plumes; air quality response to power blackouts and other exceptional events.

An analysis of the Cloudnet dataset collected at Leipzig, Germany, with special focus on mixed-phase layered clouds is presented. We derive liquid and ice water content together with vertical motions of ice particles falling through cloud base. The ice mass flux is calculated by combining measurements of ice water content and particle fall velocity. The efficiency of heterogeneous ice formation and its impact on cloud lifetime is estimated for different cloud-top temperatures by relating 5 the ice mass flux and the liquid water content at cloud top. Cloud radar measurements of polarization and fall velocity yield, that ice crystals formed in cloud layers with a geometrical thickness of less than 350m are mostly pristine when they fall out of the cloud.

The Gauss–Seidel limb scattering (GSLS) radiative transfer (RT) model simulates the transfer of solar radiation through the atmosphere and is imbedded in the retrieval algorithm used to process data from the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) limb profiler (LP), which was launched on the Suomi NPP satellite in October 2011. A previous version of this model has been compared with several other limb scattering RT models in previous studies, including Siro, MCC++, CDIPI, LIMBTRAN, SASKTRAN, VECTOR, and McSCIA. To address deficiencies in the GSLS radiance calculations revealed in earlier comparisons, several recent changes have been added that improve the accuracy and flexibility of the GSLS model, including 1. improved treatment of the variation of the extinction coefficient with altitude, both within atmospheric layers and above the nominal top of the atmosphere; 2. addition of multiple-scattering source function calculations at multiple solar zenith angles along the line of sight (LOS); 3. introduction of variable surface properties along the limb LOS, with minimal effort required to add variable atmospheric properties along the LOS as well; 4. addition of the ability to model multiple aerosol types within the model atmosphere. The model improvements 1 and 2 are verified by comparison to previously published results (using standard radiance tables whenever possible), demonstrating significant improvement in cases for which previous versions of the GSLS model performed poorly. The single-scattered radiance errors that were as high as 4% in earlier studies are now generally reduced to 0.3%, while total radiance errors generally decline from 10% to 1–3%. In all cases, the tangent height dependence of the GSLS radiance error is greatly reduced.

Global satellite observations of lidar backscatter measurements acquired by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) mission and collocated sea surface wind speed data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), are used to investigate the relation between wind driven wave slope variance and sea surface wind speed. The new slope variance – wind speed relation established from this study is similar to the linear relation from Cox-Munk (1954) and the log-linear relation from Wu (1990) for wind speed larger than 7 m/s and 13.3 m/s, respectively. For wind speed less than 7 m/s, the slope variance is proportional to the square root of the wind speed, assuming a two dimensional isotropic Gaussian wave slope distribution. This slope variance – wind speed relation becomes linear if a one dimensional Gaussian wave slope distribution and linear slope variance – wind speed relation are assumed. Contributions from whitecaps and subsurface backscattering are effectively removed by using 532 nm lidar depolarization measurements. This new slope variance – wind speed relation is used to derive sea surface wind speed from CALIPSO single shot lidar measurements (70 m spot size), after correcting for atmospheric attenuation. The CALIPSO wind speed result agrees with the collocated AMSR-E wind speed, with 1.2 m/s rms error. Ocean surface with lowest atmospheric loading and moderate wind speed (7–9 m/s) is used as target for lidar calibration correction.

This study presents an empirical relation that links the volume extinction coefficients of water clouds, the layer integrated depolarization ratios measured by lidar, and the effective radii of water clouds derived from collocated passive sensor observations. Based on Monte Carlo simulations of CALIPSO lidar observations, this method combines the cloud effective radius reported by MODIS with the lidar depolarization ratios measured by CALIPSO to estimate both the liquid water content and the effective number concentration of water clouds. The method is applied to collocated CALIPSO and MODIS measurements obtained during July and October of 2006, and January 2007. Global statistics of the cloud liquid water content and effective number concentration are presented.

This study proposed an innovative method for measuring vertically integrated aerosol single scattering albedo with combined multi-angle hyperspectral polarimeter (HySPAR) and high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) measurements for aerosols over dark ocean.

A new instrument has been developed to measure spacecraft attitude which utilizes ultraviolet radiation scattered in the Earth's limb. The sensor consists of a very stable UV bandpass filter with a center wavelength at 355 nm, imaging optics, and a linear diode array detector. The radiance of the limb at this wavelength is dominated by Rayleigh scattering and typically decreases by 15% per kilometer above 20 lan The theoretical resolution at the limb of this device is 0.39 lan per pixel for a nominal orbital altitude of 306 ion (similar or equal to 0.012 degrees) and represents a significant improvement over typical infrared-based attitude sensors which have an accuracy of similar or equal to 0.1 degrees. This system was integrated with the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) experiment and flown on STS-72 in January of 1996. The calibration and optical characterization of the device will be presented. Results from the first flight of this instrument showing an agreement with available shuttle pointing data of +/-0.05 degrees, will also be discussed.