NASA ATMOS: Atmospheric Trace Gas Concentrations from Four Space Shuttle Missions

ATMOS version 3 data provides vertical concentration profiles for over 30 trace gases, including ozone-depleting chlorine and fluorine molecules, measured from 0.5 to 99.5 km altitude. The infrared spectrometer data were collected during four specific Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1994. Spectra and derived gas concentrations are stored in netCDF and ASCII formats, grouped by mission and sunrise/sunset occultation type.

Use Cases

• Modeling vertical distribution of ozone-depleting substances based on the listed chlorine and fluorine molecules.
• Analyzing long-term atmospheric composition changes using data from the four specific mission timeframes.
• Validating climate and chemistry models with trace gas concentration profiles reported at 100 altitude levels.
• Studying diurnal variations in nitrogen oxides based on the diurnally and non-diurnally corrected NO and NO2 data.

Strengths

• Contains measurements for over 30 specific trace gas species, including key ozone-depleting compounds.
• Data covers a precise vertical altitude grid of 100 levels from 0.5 to 99.5 km.
• Collection spans four well-documented Space Shuttle missions from 1985 to 1994.
• Provides both raw spectra (Level 1) and derived concentration tables (Level 2) in multiple formats.

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from 1985-1994; last update date is unknown, limiting analysis of recent atmospheric changes.

Provenance

Source

NASA EOSDIS Project, likely from the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) instrument.

Collection Method

Collected via an infrared Fourier transform interferometer on Space Shuttle missions using solar occultation.

Time Range

April 30-May 1, 1985; March 25-April 2, 1992; April 8-16, 1993; November 3-12, 1994.

Freshness

Data collection ended in 1994; update frequency for the archived product is null.

Geography

Global, based on Space Shuttle orbital paths during sunrise and sunset occultations.