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    • Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment Carbon Dioxide and Methane Data

    Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

    The Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) is a partnership between NASA's Ames Research Center and H211, L.L.C., facilitating routine in-situ measurements over California, Nevada, and the coastal Pacific in support of satellite validation. The standard payload complement includes rigorously-calibrated ozone (O3), formaldehyde (HCHO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4) mixing ratios, as well as meteorological data including 3-D winds. Multiple vertical profiles (to ~8.5 km) can be accomplished in each 2-hr flight. The AJAX project has been collecting trace gas data on a regular basis in all seasons for over a decade, helping to assess satellite sensors' health and calibration over significant portions of their lifetimes, and complementing surface and tower-based observations collected elsewhere in the region.AJAX supports NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2/3) and Japan's Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and GOSAT-2, and collaborates with many other research organizations (e.g. California Air Resources Board (CARB), NOAA, United States Forest Service (USFS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)). AJAX celebrated its 200th science flight in 2016, and previous studies have investigated topics as varied as stratospheric-to-tropospheric transport, forest fire plumes, atmospheric river events, long-range transport of pollution from Asia to the western US, urban outflow, and emissions from gas leaks, oil fields, and dairies.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
    Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/ASDC/AJAX_CO2_CH4
    Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 15ddffcf-6835-4b1d-8171-a243cf496a6e
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/citing-data
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":34,"Longitude":-125},{"Latitude":34,"Longitude":-114},{"Latitude":42,"Longitude":-114},{"Latitude":42,"Longitude":-125},{"Latitude":34,"Longitude":-125}}}, Maximum Altitude, 9 km
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 83e7b051f369a36fbad7bec92af35859ba90ca8cd867219b28ad4df4260bd69c
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2011-06-11/2011-06-11

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