NASA ATom Mission Global Airborne Formaldehyde Measurements

2016 to 2018 data provides atmospheric formaldehyde volume mixing ratios from NASA's Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission. The NASA In Situ Airborne Formaldehyde (ISAF) instrument on the DC-8 aircraft used laser-induced fluorescence for high-sensitivity global sampling from 0.2 to 12 km altitude across four seasonal campaigns. These measurements are designed to study convective transport and the impact of boundary layer pollutants on upper atmospheric chemistry.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal and spatial variations in formaldehyde concentrations using volume mixing ratio data.
• Studying mechanisms of convective storm outflow by leveraging the instrument's fast time response measurements.
• Quantifying the influence of boundary layer pollutants on upper tropospheric ozone photochemistry.
• Validating satellite-based formaldehyde retrievals with high-altitude in situ observations.
• Investigating formaldehyde's role as a tracer for atmospheric oxidation processes.

Strengths

• Data collection spans four seasonal campaigns from 2016 to 2018, providing temporal coverage.
• Measurements use laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) with sensitivity for detecting abundances as low as 10 parts per trillion.
• Sampling was systematic and global, with continuous vertical profiling from 0.2 to 12 km altitude.
• Dataset is hosted by NASA and appears on multiple platforms, indicating established provenance.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with one listing 2018-05-07 and another listing 2026-03 13.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Goddard Space Flight Center.

Collection Method

In situ airborne measurements using the ISAF instrument on the NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

2016 to 2018

Freshness

2026-03-13 13:59:07.739397

Geography

Global-scale sampling