Abstract
The ability of satellite instruments to accurately observe long-term
changes in atmospheric temperature depends on many factors including the
absolute accuracy of the measurement, the stability of the calibration
of the instrument, the stability of the satellite orbit, and the
stability of the numerical algorithm that produces the temperature data.
We present an example of algorithm instability recently discovered in
the temperature dataset from the SABER instrument on the NASA TIMED
satellite. The instability resulted in derived temperatures that were
substantially colder than anticipated from mid-December 2019 to
mid-2022. This algorithm-induced change in temperature over one to two
years corresponded to the expected change over several decades from
increasing anthropogenic CO2. This paper highlights the importance of
algorithm stability in developing Geospace Data Records (GDRs) for
Earth’s mesosphere and lower thermosphere. A corrected version (Version
2.08) of the temperatures from SABER is described.