ITOP-UK (ICARTT-UK)
Introduction
ITOP
(Intercontinental Transport of Ozone and Precursors) was an international project
involving teams from Germany, France, the UK and the USA.
Its aim was to study intercontinental transport of air pollutants by means
of coordinated flights over three geographic regions (namely, the East
coast of North America, Azores and the West coast of Europe).
ITOP was a component of the broader international programme
ICARTT
(International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and
Transformation), which coordinated the efforts of various American and
European groups who have developed plans for field campaigns in the summer
of 2004, with the aim of improving our understanding of the factors
determining air quality over the two continents and over remote regions of
the North Atlantic.
The British contribution to ITOP was funded by
NERC through the
UTLS-Ozone (Upper Troposphere / Lower
Stratosphere Ozone) Directed Research Programme and made use of the
FAAM Bae-146 aircraft.
Availability of data
The ITOP-UK data set includes
- Trajectories and other forecast products calculated by John Methven
(University of Reading),
based on ECMWF forecast wind fields, to support ICARTT flight planning.
- Near-real-time chemical analyses produced by the University of Cambridge
using the pTOMCAT chemical transport model.
- Data collected onboard the FAAM
Bae-146 aircraft during the ITOP campaign (12 July - 3 August 2004).
These data include both core and non-core data (for a definition of
core data, see the document on
FAAM
Instruments).
A list of currently available
flight data
is provided.
Access to the processed BAe-146 core data is public and ruled by the
FAAM Data Protocol.
Access to the raw BAe-146 core data is restricted to FAAM staff.
Other ITOP-UK data, i.e. the forecast products and the Bae-146 non-core data,
are now public (with signature of the Met Office agreement required for the
forecasts), after having been restricted to the UTLS-Ozone and ICARTT participants
during a period of time of 2 years after the last flight, in agreement with the
UTLS-Ozone Data Protocol.
Data, forecasts, documentation and software supplied to the BADC by
the project teams are stored in the BADC
ITOP-UK archive,
from where they can be viewed and downloaded by authorised users (see below).
Forecasts can also be accessed via the ITOP-UK Forecasts interface web page.
Data providers and users should also be aware that the following documents apply
to the ITOP-UK data set.
- All flight data:
- Forecast products and Bae-146 non-core data:
Data format - File names
ITOP data are stored in either
NetCDF or ICARTT ASCII format
(NASA Ames Format
updated as described in the
ICARTT Data Management Implementation Plan, pp. 8-17).
Data file names follow the ICARTT file name convention as described in the
ICARTT Data Management Implementation Plan
(pp. 7-8) but the launch number L# is replaced by the FAAM flight number.
Instructions to data providers
- FAAM core data.
For the formatting and submission of FAAM core data, please refer to the
FAAM Data Set Web Page.
- Other data.
Data file names.
Providers of data that are not FAAM core data or forecasts are kindly requested
to follow the ICARTT file name convention described in the
ICARTT Data Management Implementation Plan
(pp. 7-8).
File names are made of four to seven components separated by underscore ( _ )
signs, plus the file name extension, separated from the file name body by a dot.
The first four file name fields and the extension are mandatory, the last three
fields are optional.
Please note the following specificities.
-
The first component of the file name is the instrument (or group of instruments,
or model) name.
A list of standard
instrument/model names,
including the FAAM instruments, is available.
Please advise the BADC if you can't find
your instrument or model in the list, or if you would like to record data from
several instruments in a single file, so that we can update the list (in
agreement with the FAAM board if it is an instrument or a group of instruments
flying on the FAAM aircraft).
-
The second component of file names (the location/platform) must be
faam in the case of data collected onboard the FAAM aircraft.
-
It is recommended to replace the (optional) ICARTT launch number L#
(5th field)
by the (mandatory) FAAM flight number (Bxxx for ITOP flights),
which will make your files compliant with the
FAAM File Name Convention.
Data file format.
ICARTT has adopted NetCDF and (an updated flavour of) NASA Ames as accepted
standard formats.
Formatting recommendations can be found in the
ICARTT Data Management Implementation Plan
(pp. 8-17).
NetCDF formatted files should comply with
the CF metadata conventions.
The BADC provides tools to check data formatting: the
NetCDF format checker and the
NASA-Ames format
checker.
Please be aware that the BADC NASA Ames checker does not integrate the changes
provided for in the ICARTT Data Management Implementation Plan.
An executable version of the NASA Ames format checker updated for ICARTT, the
FileScanning
Software for Windows,
is available from the
NASA LARC Tools Library
and from the NASA
INTEX-NA
website.
If your home computer is a Windows based machine, you can download it and run
it locally.
Metadata.
It is important that the data be well documented.
Please follow the BADC guidelines regarding the submission of
metadata.
Data file submission.
Please use the
ITOP web uploader
(access restricted to UTLS participants).
Large amounts of files can also be submitted by ftp.
Documentation
Services
Links to further information
Citation
Natural Environment Research Council, [Lewis, A.]. UTLS - International Transport of Ozone and Precursors (ITOP-UK), [Internet]. British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2004-, Date of Citation. Available from http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/itop/
Who to contact
- The ITOP-UK Principal Investigator is
Ally Lewis (University of York).
- Any query regarding the data should be sent to the
BADC help desk.
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