FROM FLIGHT DATA TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ATMOSPHERE'S CHEMISTRY: AN EXAMPLE FROM INTEX-NA

Abstract and Concept

This paper describes how proper management of airborne data contributes to an increase in knowledge of the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere. Before the mission, historical data are used by mission scientists to design the airborne campaign. During the field phase, flight planners use new data from each flight to lay out following flights. Post-mission, the newly-acquired data are archived for maximum accessibility to a wide range of interested parties, to include educators and the interested public as well as the mission participants. Throughout all phases of the mission, data specialists maintain close cooperation with mission scientists, flight planners, principal investigators, and potential users to ensure the data become useful knowledge. This paper focuses on this process as successfully implemented for INTEX-NA (INTEX-NA is defined below), and cites an example benefiting NOAA.

 

The Field Mission

INTEX (the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment) is an atmospheric chemistry field mission seeking to understand the transport and behavior of gases and aerosols on transcontinental and intercontinental scales and their impact on air quality and climate. INTEX is a NASA contribution to a larger, global effort, ICARTT (International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation). A particular focus of the 2004 phase of INTEX (“INTEX-NA”, for North America) is to quantify and characterize the inflow and outflow of pollution over that continent. The red lines in the figure below show the track lines of the INTEX-NA flights, designed to sample a wide variety of chemical species over and around the continental US.

 

Figure 1. The flight lines indicate the many regions of the world sampled during the heritage Global Tropospheric Experiment (GTE) and the recent INTEX campaigns. The broad arrow represents the flow of data through Langley's archive facility and ultimately to scientific and public users.

 

Data Collection and Archiving

Data Management for the final phase of INTEX-NA has been completed. The web-based Principal Investigator Data Registration system and web-based data archive proved to be invaluable to mission scientists in making revisions to their data both in the field and after returning home, as they refined instrument calibrations and algorithms. NASA-sponsored aircraft serving as instrument platforms for the hundreds of data sets included the DC-8, SkyResearch J-31, and Proteus. The archive also hosts data sets from ground stations, satellites, national lighning-sensor and ozondesondes networks, and air mass trajectory and model calculations. These data are now publicly available on the web at http://www.air-larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/arcstat and via FTP at ftp-air.larc.nasa.gov/pub/INTEXA. The data have also been incorporated into a plotting tool at http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/2Dplotter and into a Digital Atlas Tool http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/datlas. The latter application displays altitude profiles (as well as statistical summaries) of chemical species measured on the DC-8 for the entire INTEX-NA mission. The archive also hosts merge products standardized to a common time-base for many species. 60-sec merges were created during the field phase of the mission and used for planning subsequent flights. For the preliminary and final phases of the mission, merges were created for a very wide variety of chemical species as needed by mission scientists. Links to the INTEX-NA mission summaries, data archive, and analysis tools can be accessed from http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/missions/intexna/intexna.htm. Among these is the Satellite Predictor Tool http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/tools/predict.htm, which yields the subtracks of an orbiting spacecraft along with the footprint paths of sensors selected by the user. This was particularly useful for planning flights to support validation of satellite instruments.

 

Data Management and Formatting

To support INTEX-NA, Langley's REASoN-CAN team worked very closely with NOAA's Aeronomy Lab, also an ICARTT mission partner, in developing the ICARTT data protocol and formats. Langley's group then took the lead in developing a web-based data scanning and archiving system, consisting of several tools that worked together to achieve full automation.  Mission scientists received instant feedbacks which proved very useful for uploading their data files.  The archiving system was then expanded to archive data for many additional platforms sampled during the ICARTT mission. Future refinements of this system will be undertaken with the cooperation of international data users' working groups.

 

Enabling Science: An Example of Moving Data to Knowledge

Enabling Science: an Example. Making use of data merge and overlay tools developed by Langley's REASoN team, a NOAA researcher Owen Cooper combined data from the IONS ozonesonde network, the National Lightning Detection Network, and MOZAIC observations from commercial aircraft. These data were interpreted by Cooper with the FLEXPART dispersion model to establish the link between lightning emission of nitrogen oxides and the large increases in ozone observed over North America during the ICARTT experiment.

 

Acknowledgements

The REASoN-CAN Award. Through its REASoN-CAN grant “Synergystic Data Support for Atmospheric Chemistry Field Campaigns,” Langley Research Center provides data management to support flight planning during tropospheric chemistry field missions. After the field phase of a mission, Langley's researchers gather corroborating data from many sources and provide these data to the scientific and educational community in forms that encourage further research and analysis, and to support NASA's outreach programs.   The award is provided through NASA's Program Executive for Data Systems, Science Mission Directorate.