COMEX Mobile Methane Survey Data from Southern California

NASA's AMOG Surveyor, a mobile air quality laboratory built into a passenger car, collected high-frequency in situ measurements of methane and other trace gases during the 2014 COMEX field campaign. The dataset includes Level 0 raw sensor data and Level 1 processed data with corrected wind measurements and gap filling, focusing on emissions from sources like landfills, refineries, and agriculture in Southern California. Data is stored in HDF5 format with measurements recorded at rates up to 5 Hz.

Use Cases

• Quantifying methane emissions from specific source types like landfills and petroleum refineries using mobile concentration measurements.
• Analyzing the spatial distribution of atmospheric methane plumes across Southern California's urban and industrial landscape.
• Studying local wind patterns and their influence on pollutant dispersion with true wind data corrected for vehicle motion.
• Validating satellite-based methane observations or regional emission inventories with ground-truth mobile data.
• Investigating the temporal variability of trace gas concentrations near major emission sources during the 2014 study period.

Strengths

• Data includes both raw (Level 0) and processed (Level 1) versions, with L1 data featuring outlier filtering and gap filling.
• Measurements were collected at high temporal resolution, with sensor data interpolated to a uniform 5 Hz timebase.
• The mobile platform allowed for targeted sampling of diverse emission sources including industrial, agricultural, and natural sites.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from all provided sources.
• A conflict exists in the 'last updated' date: Data.gov lists 2026-03 -13, while NASA Earthdata lists 2015-08-20.
• The license is ambiguously noted as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms provided.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Data collected via the AMOG Surveyor mobile laboratory using an asynchronous NMEA-based tagstream logging system with multiple gas analyzers.

Time Range

2014-2015

Freshness

2026-03-13 03:15:26.511102

Geography

Southern California, USA