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    • Measurement of Air Pollution from Satellites (MAPS) Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications - 3 (OSTA3) Carbon Monoxide 5 degree by 5 degree data

    Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

    MAPS Overview The MAPS experiment measures the global distribution of carbon monoxide (CO) mixing ratios in the free troposphere. Because of MAPS' previous flights on board the Space Shuttle, Earth system scientists now know that carbon monoxide concentrations in the troposphere are highly variable around the planet, and that widespread burning in the South American Amazon Basin and southern cerrados, the African savannahs,and the Australian grasslands and ranches are major sources of carbon monoxide in the southern hemisphere and tropical troposphere.InstrumentThe MAPS instrument is based on a technique called gas filter radiometry. Thermal energy from the Earth passes through the atmosphere and enters the viewport of the downlooking MAPS instrument. Carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide (N2O) in the atmosphere produce unique absorption lines in the transmitted energy. The energy which enters the MAPS instrument is split into & three beams. One beam passes through a cell containing CO and falls onto a detector. This CO gas cell acts as a filter for the effects of CO present in the middle troposphere. A second beam falls directly onto a detector without passing through any gas filter. The difference in the voltage of the signals from these two detectors can be used to determine the amount of CO present in the atmosphere at an altitude of 7-8 km. A third beam of the incident energy passes through a cell containing N2O and falls onto a detector. This N2O gas cell acts as a filter for the effects of N2O present in the atmosphere. The global distribution of N2O is well known, so the N2O signal can be used to detect the presence of clouds in the field of view and to correct the simultaneous CO measurement for systematic errors in the data. The data that are available from MAPS OSTA3 include a 5 by 5 degree gridded box (MAPS_OSTA3_5X5_HDF) and a second by second data product (MAPS_OSTA3_COSEC_HDF). These data sets are available from the Langley DAAC.

    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.

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    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/MAPS_OSTA3_CO5X5_HDF
    Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
    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 872073bb-5fd9-4ba4-a1fc-1be36ded9553
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/MAPS.html
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":-70,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":-70,"Longitude":180},{"Latitude":70,"Longitude":180},{"Latitude":70,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":-70,"Longitude":-180}}}
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 529a07ff0eb5e145da54f238006094fa54bffb6795857014d02f38832a143d7a
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 1984-10-06/1984-10-06

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