SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) DC-8 In-Situ Meteorological and Navigation Data

SONEX_TraceGas_AircraftInSitu_DC8_Data_1 is the in-situ meteorological and navigation data collected onboard the DC-8 aircraft during the SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) suborbital campaign. Data collection for this product is complete. The SASS (Subsonics Assessment) Ozone and NOx Experiment (SONEX) was an international, multi-organizational mission that took place in October-November 1997. NASA was the US sponsor of SONEX that partnered with POLINAT-2 (Pollution from Aircraft Emissions in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor) funded by the German DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) or German Aerospace Agency. NASA flew the DC-8 aircraft out of NASA/Ames Research Center. DLR operated an instrumented Falcon 20 aircraft. The staging locations for NAFC sampling were primarily Bangor, Maine (US), and Shannon, Ireland. Subsonic aircraft emissions impact several aspects of atmospheric composition: nitrogen oxides (NOx), CO, and hydrocarbons from emissions can perturb upper tropospheric/lower stratospheric (UT/LS) ozone; water vapor, soot, and sulfur oxides (SOx) emitted by aircraft may perturb clouds and aerosols, changing UT/LS radiative forcing and global temperature. In SONEX and POLINAT, flights were conducted in the vicinity of the North Atlantic Flight Coordinator (NAFC) to observe the impact of aircraft emissions on NOx and ozone (O3). The DC-8 aircraft payload (Singh et al., 1999) primarily measured in-situ CO, CO2, hydrocarbons/halocarbons, O3, aerosols (Dibb et al., 2000), OH/HO2, water vapor, nitric acid (Talbot et al., 1999), photolysis rates, temperature, pressure, winds, NOx, and NOy. Three sampling approaches were implemented during SONEX. First, special meteorological (Fuelberg et al., 2000) were developed to allow targeted sampling for air parcels affected by aircraft emissions and various meteorological events, e.g., convection, lightning (Jeker et al., 2000), stratospheric intrusions (Cho et al., 2000). Second, because the NAFC had not been extensively sampled in the past, it was important for SONEX to characterize the climatology of trace species like CN (Wang et al., 2000), NOx and NOy (Koike et al., 2000). Third, tracers (Simpson et al., 2000; Thompson et al., 1999) and model sensitivity studies (Meijer et al., 2000) were employed for Air Mass Identification. This sampling strategy answered the following questions: Where and when are air masses found with the greatest aircraft influence? When and where was stratospheric air sampled? SONEX showed a substantial impact of aircraft emissions on UT/LS NOx and CN in the vicinity of fresh aircraft emissions. However, during October-November 1997 over the NAFC, UT/LS NOx was dominated by surface emissions redistributed by convection and augmented by lightning.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Paul Bui
Last Updated April 23, 2025, 22:50 (UTC)
Created April 23, 2025, 22:50 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_@id https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
citation 2023-08-21. Archived by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government, NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC. https://doi.org/10.5067/ASDC/SUBORBITAL/SONEX_TraceGas_AircraftInSitu_DC8_Data_1.
harvest_object_id 711f052b-f29a-47de-967b-6404c298904e
harvest_source_id 61638e72-b36c-4866-9d28-551a3062f158
harvest_source_title DNG Legacy Data
identifier C2662399958-LARC_ASDC
issued 1997-10-07
landingPage https://doi.org/10.5067/ASDC/SUBORBITAL/SONEX_TraceGas_AircraftInSitu_DC8_Data_1
language {en-US}
metadata_type geospatial
modified 1997-11-12
programCode {026:001}
publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash e695091efa9559dc345a07c2fad318472b68e0bd7bd52471af4639ac85f7f799
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><gml:Polygon xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml/3.2" srsName="EPSG:9825"><gml:outerBoundaryIs><gml:LinearRing><gml:posList>19.89 -129.403 19.89 13.023 69.127 13.023 69.127 -129.403 19.89 -129.403</gml:posList></gml:LinearRing></gml:outerBoundaryIs><gml:innerBoundaryIs></gml:innerBoundaryIs></gml:Polygon>
temporal 1997-10-07T00:00:00Z/1997-11-13T23:59:59.999Z
theme {SONEX,geospatial}