Global Space-based Stratospheric Aerosol Climatology Version 2.23 (GloSSAC_2.23) Announcement

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Global Space-based Stratospheric Aerosol Climatology Version 2.23 (GloSSAC_2.23) Now Available

NASA’s ASDC has now released the Global Space-based Stratospheric Aerosol Climatology (GloSSAC) Version 2.23 collection. Version 2.23 extends the dataset coverage from Jan 1st, 1979, to December 31st, 2024, and includes several minor revisions. This release incorporates the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) version 6.0 and OSIRIS version 7.4. As previously mentioned, CALIOP data has been unavailable since January 2022. To compensate for this gap, the current version employs a two-step approach: SAGE III/ISS data are first temporally interpolated, followed by the use of time-interpolated OSIRIS data to fill remaining gaps in regions beyond 60°S/N.
GloSSAC is a 45-year database that tracks aerosol particles in the stratosphere, collected mainly from satellites. Scientists originally created GloSSAC to help climate models understand how stratospheric aerosols affect our climate from 1979 to 2014 and have since been updated through 2021.
The dataset primarily uses measurements from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) satellite series up until mid-2005. After that, it relies on two other satellite instruments: Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System (OSIRIS) and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO). The team has also added data from SAGE III on the International Space Station to bring the record up to the present day and to verify our methods for combining different satellite measurements.
To create a complete picture, the team fills in any missing information using data from additional satellites, as well as ground-based stations, aircraft, and weather balloons. The result is a comprehensive, worldwide dataset with no gaps, primarily tracking aerosol extinction—a measure of how these particles scatter and absorb light—at two specific wavelengths (525 and 1020 nanometers), along with other measurements when available.

Technical Details
·         Temporal coverage: 1979-01-01 – 2024-12-31
·         Spatial coverage/resolution: -80 South, 80 North, -180 West, 180 East
·         File format: netCDF-3
·         Processing level: 3
·         Version: 2.23

Access Methods
Users can access this data through:

·         NASA Earthdata Search
·         ASDC Direct Data Download

User Support
For questions about this data release or assistance with data access, please contact the ASDC User Services team or visit the Earthdata Forum.