A comparative study of aerosol extinction measurements made by the SAM II and SAGE satellite experiments

SAM II and SAGE are two satellite experiments designed to measure stratospheric aerosol extinction using the technique of solar occultation or limb extinction. Although each sensor is mounted aboard a different satellite, there are occasions when their measurement locations are nearly coincident, thereby providing opportunities for a measurement comparison. In this paper, the aerosol extinction profiles and daily contour plots for some of these events in 1979 are reported. The comparisons shown in this paper demonstrate that SAM II and SAGE are producing similar aerosol extinction profiles within their measurement errors and that since SAM II has been previously validated, these results show the validity of the SAGE aerosol measurements.