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SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) DC-8 In-Situ Aerosol Data

Metadata Updated: September 18, 2025

SONEX_Aerosol_AircraftInSitu_DC8_Data_1 is the in-situ aerosol data collected onboard the DC-8 aircraft during the SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) suborbital campaign. Data was collected via in-situ instrumentation, including multiple condensation nuclei counters (CNCs), ACIR (Aerosol/Cloud Particle Impactor/Replicator), FSSP, PCASP, and SAGA. Data collection for this product is complete.The SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) was an international, multi-organizational mission that took place in October-November 1997. NASA was the US sponsor of SONEX that partnered with POLINAT-2 (Pollution from Aircraft Emissions in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor) funded by the German DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) or German Aerospace Agency. NASA flew the DC-8 aircraft out of NASA/Ames Research Center. DLR operated an instrumented Falcon 20 aircraft. The staging locations for NAFC sampling were primarily Bangor, Maine (US), and Shannon, Ireland. Subsonic aircraft emissions impact several aspects of atmospheric composition: nitrogen oxides (NOx), CO, and hydrocarbons from emissions can perturb upper tropospheric/lower stratospheric (UT/LS) ozone; water vapor, soot, and sulfur oxides (SOx) emitted by aircraft may perturb clouds and aerosols, changing UT/LS radiative forcing and global temperature.In SONEX and POLINAT, flights were conducted in the vicinity of the North Atlantic Flight Coordinator (NAFC) to observe the impact of aircraft emissions on NOx and ozone (O3). The DC-8 aircraft payload (Singh et al., 1999) primarily measured in-situ CO, CO2, hydrocarbons/halocarbons, O3, aerosols (Dibb et al., 2000), OH/HO2, water vapor, nitric acid (Talbot et al., 1999), photolysis rates, temperature, pressure, winds, NOx, and NOy.Three sampling approaches were implemented during SONEX. First, special meteorological (Fuelberg et al., 2000) were developed to allow targeted sampling for air parcels affected by aircraft emissions and various meteorological events, e.g., convection, lightning (Jeker et al., 2000), stratospheric intrusions (Cho et al., 2000). Second, because the NAFC had not been extensively sampled in the past, it was important for SONEX to characterize the climatology of trace species like CN (Wang et al., 2000), NOx and NOy (Koike et al., 2000). Third, tracers (Simpson et al., 2000; Thompson et al., 1999) and model sensitivity studies (Meijer et al., 2000) were employed for Air Mass Identification. This sampling strategy answered the following questions: Where and when are air masses found with the greatest aircraft influence? When and where was stratospheric air sampled? SONEX showed a substantial impact of aircraft emissions on UT/LS NOx and CN in the vicinity of fresh aircraft emissions. However, during October-November 1997 over the NAFC, UT/LS NOx was dominated by surface emissions redistributed by convection and augmented by lightning.

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 18, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025
Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/ASDC/SUBORBITAL/SONEX_Aerosol_AircraftInSitu_DC8_Data_1
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 cc1edbd4-2215-4755-8b4f-045b0bdad9c4
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.1029/1999JD900424
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":19.89,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":19.89,"Longitude":49.34},{"Latitude":69.127,"Longitude":49.34},{"Latitude":69.127,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":19.89,"Longitude":-180}}}, Minimum Altitude;Maximum Altitude, 0 km;38.5 km
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 359b1f8ea683a068c570a67ce8ebbd556d342f4054f51fb9ade63bb0cf9584b0
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1997-10-07/1997-10-07

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