ATom: Age of Air, ArN2 Ratio, and Trace Gases in Stratospheric Samples, 2009-2018
This dataset from the Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) provides calculated age of air (AoA) and the argon/nitrogen (Ar/N2) ratio (per meg) from stratospheric flask samples and simultaneous high-frequency measurements of nitrous oxide (N2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide (CO) from three different NASA airborne campaigns. The trace gases were used to identify 235 flask samples with stratospheric influence collected by the Medusa Whole Air Sampler and to calculate AoA using a new N2O-AoA relationship developed using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. The data span a wide range of latitudes poleward of 40 degrees in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and cover the period 2009-01-10 to 2018-05-21.
ATom is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital-2 mission to study the impact of human-produced air pollution on greenhouse gases and on chemically reactive gases in the atmosphere. ATom deployed an extensive gas and aerosol payload on the NASA DC-8 aircraft for systematic, global-scale sampling of the atmosphere, profiling continuously from 0.2 to 12 km altitude. Around-the-world flights were conducted in each of four seasons between 2016 and 2018. See all ORNL DAAC data from ATom.
Data Citation: Birner, B., M. Chipperfield, E.J. Morgan, and R.F. Keeling. 2020. ATom: Age of Air, ArN2 Ratio, and Trace Gases in Stratospheric Samples, 2009-2018. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1788