TOMSN7OVP: Daily Atmospheric Measurements from Nimbus-7

Daily ground station overpass data from the Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument, which was operational until May 1993. The dataset contains total column ozone, UV aerosol index, Rayleigh-corrected surface reflectivity, and sulfur dioxide index values derived from the best-matched satellite field-of-view for each site. Data were produced by NASA's Laboratory for Atmospheres and are stored in ASCII format.

Use Cases

• Tracking long-term ozone depletion based on daily total column ozone measurements.
• Analyzing atmospheric aerosol loading and volcanic activity using the UV aerosol index.
• Studying sulfur dioxide emissions from industrial or volcanic sources via the sulfur dioxide index.
• Calibrating surface reflectance models with Lambertian effective surface reflectivity data.

Strengths

• Provides daily, site-specific measurements for the entire operational lifetime of the Nimbus-7 TOMS instrument.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA and government portals indicates established scientific use and importance.
• Contains multiple derived atmospheric indices (ozone, aerosol, SO2) from a single, calibrated satellite instrument.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, specific column names, and file size are unavailable across all sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (1993 vs. 2026) create uncertainty about metadata maintenance versus data collection end date.
• Data format is ASCII, which may require parsing for modern analytical workflows compared to structured formats like NetCDF.

Provenance

Source

Laboratory for Atmospheres at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Code 614).

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument.

Time Range

From instrument launch (likely 1978) until operational end in May 1993.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:44:05.834154 (from datagov, though this likely reflects metadata update, not new data)

Geography

Global coverage at specific ground station overpass locations.