NASA ATom Merged Atmospheric Chemistry and Aerosols Data

NASA's Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission dataset provides merged atmospheric measurements of greenhouse gases and pollutants, including carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and black carbon aerosols. The data was collected during airborne campaigns and is processed into seven aggregation intervals, from 1-second to instrument-specific averages. This dataset is intended to improve the representation of reactive gases and short-lived climate forcers in global atmospheric models.

Use Cases

• Validating global model simulations of tropospheric ozone (O3) concentrations against airborne observations.
• Analyzing the correlation between black carbon (BC) aerosol levels and other trace gases like methane (CH4).
• Studying the spatial distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) across different atmospheric profiles and flight distances.
• Investigating source attribution for sulfur compounds and halocarbons using merged, time-aligned chemical data.
• Calibrating satellite retrievals of atmospheric carbon and hydrocarbon compounds with in-situ airborne measurements.

Strengths

• Data is merged from multiple instruments, providing aligned measurements for cross-species analysis.
• Products are available at seven different temporal aggregation intervals, including 1-second and 10-second resolutions.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, reporting both 2018-05-21 and 2026-03-13.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission.

Collection Method

Airborne campaigns collecting in-situ atmospheric measurements, merged from all instruments.

Time Range

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Freshness

2026-03-13 13:55:26.980435

Geography

Global, based on airborne campaign flight paths.