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    • ATom: Merged Atmospheric Chemistry, Trace Gases, and Aerosols

    Metadata Updated: August 30, 2025

    This dataset provides information on greenhouse gases and human-produced air pollution, including atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), tropospheric ozone (O3), and black carbon (BC) aerosols, collected during airborne campaigns conducted by NASA's Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission. This dataset includes merged data from all instruments plus additional data such as numbered profiles and distance flown. Merged data have been created for seven different sampling intervals. In the case of data obtained over longer time intervals (e.g. flask data), the merge files provide (weighted) averages to match the sampling intervals. ATom deploys an extensive gas and aerosol payload on the NASA DC-8 aircraft for a systematic, global-scale sampling of the atmosphere, profiling continuously from 0.2 to 12 km altitude. Flights occurred in each of 4 seasons from 2016 to 2018. Flights originate from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, fly north to the western Arctic, south to the South Pacific, east to the Atlantic, north to Greenland, and return to California across central North America. ATom establishes a single, contiguous, global-scale dataset. This comprehensive dataset will be used to improve the representation of chemically reactive gases and short-lived climate forcers in global models of atmospheric chemistry and climate. Profiles of the reactive gases will also provide critical information for the validation of satellite data, particularly in remote areas where in situ data is lacking. Complete aircraft flight information including, but not limited to, latitude, longitude, and altitude are also provided. This data release provides results from all instruments on all four ATom flight campaigns.

    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 August 30, 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 August 30, 2025
    Publisher ORNL_DAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1581
    Data Last Modified 2025-08-27
    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 5f0479d8-9cc6-418e-a884-6a6826da47cf
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?q=ATom_merge_1581&ac=true
    Old Spatial {"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90.0},"CARTESIAN"
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 2401a4b1753e5687de39deb22f680a0f716c4f59cae35d0d8dc28fdf9a273d05
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2016-07-29/2016-07-29

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