This site provides information and access to a commonly-formatted Earth system data record (ESDR) for stratospheric composition, of high relevance to the issue of ozone decline and recovery. High-quality long-term ozone and related trace gas data records are needed to (a) evaluate and understand composition changes in the atmosphere and (b) constrain model representations of atmospheric dynamics and photochemistry.
The datasets are drawn from zonal mean satellite-derived global stratospheric composition measurements from 1979 onward, as well as from GMAO MERRA (meteorological analyses) for temperature. The satellite-based abundance measurements come from past missions (e.g., SAGE, HALOE data) as well as ongoing missions (ACE-FTS and Aura MLS). The planned data records are provided as time series monthly zonal average profiles (versus pressure) as a function of latitude, for temperature and the following species: hydrogen chloride (HCl), ozone (O3), water vapor (H2O), nitric acid (HNO3), and nitrous oxide (N2O).
The establishment of such commonly-formatted data records involves careful screening and production of "source" datasets (zonal means from the original instrument (Level 2) data), the evaluation of offsets (biases) between various datasets, and assessments of spatial and temporal consistency.
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