Western North America Air Mass Back Trajectories for 1994

Western North America back trajectory data simulates the 15-day transport history of air masses arriving at receptor locations across the region for the year 1994. The dataset uses the FLEXPART Lagrangian particle dispersion model driven by ERA5 reanalysis, providing hourly global simulations at a 1° x 1° spatial resolution from the surface to 20 km altitude. It was generated by NASA's Atmospheric Composition Campaign Data Analysis and Modeling program with support from NASA High-End Computing resources.

Use Cases

• Identifying source regions contributing to high ozone observations at specific receptor locations using the gridded ozone value product.
• Analyzing seasonal or decadal changes in atmospheric transport patterns over Western North America using the high-temporal-resolution trajectory data.
• Supporting source contribution analyses for other atmospheric components co-located with the defined ozone receptor points.
• Studying vertical transport of air masses from the surface to the upper troposphere across different layers up to 20 km.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution global simulations with hourly temporal and 1° x 1° spatial resolution.
• Covers a vertical range from the surface up to 20 km above ground level for detailed layer analysis.
• Based on the established FLEXPART model driven by the ERA5 reanalysis dataset.

Limitations

• Conflicting metadata: one source lists a last updated date of 2026-03-12, while another lists 1994-12-31, creating uncertainty about data currency.
• Key technical details such as row count, column names, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• License is specified as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms provided.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Atmospheric Composition Campaign Data Analysis and Modeling program, NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division.

Collection Method

Backward simulations using the FLEXPART Lagrangian particle dispersion model, driven by ERA5 reanalysis data.

Time Range

1994

Freshness

2026-03-12 19:50:22.825351

Geography

Western North America (receptor locations), with global simulation coverage.