Atmospheric PAN and PPN Measurements from NASA's Global ATom Mission

NASA's Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission collected peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) and peroxyl propionyl nitrate (PPN) measurements from 2016 to 2018 across four seasons. The Georgia Tech Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (GT-CIMS) on the NASA DC-8 aircraft sampled the atmosphere from 0.2 to 12 km altitude on global flight paths. This dataset provides a contiguous, global-scale record of reactive nitrogen species for atmospheric model improvement.

Use Cases

• Validating global atmospheric chemistry models using in-situ PAN and PPN concentration profiles.
• Studying seasonal and spatial variability of photochemical smog precursors across remote ocean and polar regions.
• Analyzing the vertical distribution (0.2-12 km) of reactive nitrogen species to understand atmospheric transport and chemistry.
• Investigating the role of peroxyacyl nitrates as short-lived climate forcers and their impact on atmospheric composition.

Strengths

• Provides a single, contiguous global-scale dataset from systematic airborne campaigns.
• Covers a wide vertical profile from 0.2 km to 12 km altitude.
• Includes measurements across four distinct seasons from 2016 to 2018, capturing temporal variability.
• Data collection is part of a major NASA mission (ATom) with a cross-platform presence, indicating importance.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' date between platforms (2017 on NASA Earthdata vs. 2026 on Data.gov).
• The license is specified only as 'other-license-specified', requiring further investigation for reuse.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Georgia Tech Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (GT-CIMS).

Collection Method

Airborne in-situ measurements collected by the GT-CIMS instrument aboard the NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

2016 to 2018

Freshness

2026-03-13 08:28:58.359069

Geography

Global, with flight paths from California to the western Arctic, South Pacific, Atlantic, Greenland, and across central North America.