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SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) Merge Data Files

Metadata Updated: April 9, 2026

SONEX_Merge_DC8_Data_1 is all of the project generated merge files for the SONEX suborbital campaign. Types of merges include 1- and 5-minute, aerosol composition-based, H2O2-based, HNO3-based, hydrocarbon-based, NO-based, and PAN-based merges. 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: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 9, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 9, 2026
Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/ASDC/SUBORBITAL/SONEX_Merge_DC8_Data_1
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
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 2f92ac78-c05a-413b-a3ac-6e2ac3339f72
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":19.89,"Longitude":-178.2},{"Latitude":19.89,"Longitude":148.2},{"Latitude":84.32,"Longitude":148.2},{"Latitude":84.32,"Longitude":-178.2},{"Latitude":19.89,"Longitude":-178.2}}}, Minimum Altitude;Maximum Altitude, 0 km;38.5 km
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 42a40b41042e3a1b24945e04ed08ed628cd8d6f3e9a1416d269b46263da0d0f6
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1997-10-07/1997-11-12

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