ATMOSL2AT: Atmospheric Trace Gas Profiles from Four Shuttle Missions

ATMOS Level 2 data provides vertical concentrations of over 30 trace gases, including ozone-depleting molecules, at 100 altitude levels from 0.5 to 99.5 km. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration collected this data during four space shuttle missions between 1985 and 1994. Files are grouped by mission and occultation type and include time and geolocation information.

Use Cases

• Modeling stratospheric ozone depletion based on chlorine and fluorine molecule concentrations
• Analyzing vertical distribution of greenhouse gases like CO2, CH4, and N2O
• Studying diurnal variations of nitrogen oxides based on NO and NO2 data
• Tracking long-term changes in atmospheric composition by comparing data from four shuttle missions
• Mapping global distribution of trace gases using the included geolocation information

Strengths

• Reports concentrations for over 30 distinct trace gases, including many ozone-depleting species
• Provides data at 100 vertical altitude levels from 0.5 to 99.5 km
• Contains data from four distinct space shuttle missions spanning a decade (1985-1994)
• Includes both diurnally corrected and uncorrected data for nitrogen oxides

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data collection ended in 1994; temporal coverage is historical

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Measured by the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) infrared Fourier transform spectrometer on space shuttle missions.

Time Range

April 30, 1985 to November 12, 1994

Geography

Global, based on shuttle mission trajectories