Airborne Arctic Stratospheric Expedition II (AASE II)

This CD-ROM contains the final data from the Airborne Arctic Stratospheric Expedition II (AASE II) which was based in Bangor, Maine between October 1991 and March 1992, with ER-2 flights from Ames Research Center, Fairbanks (Alaska), and Bangor; and DC-8 flights from Ames, Bangor, Anchorage (Alaska), Stavanger (Norway), and Tahiti. This was a follow-up to an earlier AASE campaign in 1989.

The data consist of measurements collected onboard the NASA ER-2 and DC-8 aircraft (for example, ClO, BrO, HCl, O₃, NO_x, N₂O, HNO₃, whole air samples and aerosol measurements). In addition, there are ozonesonde soundings from six Canadian stations, global grid point values of Nimbus 7 TOMS ozone, and selected radiosonde soundings from stations in the region of the experiment.

Theory teams provided calculations of potential vorticity, temperature, geopotential, horizontal winds, parcel back trajectories, and concentrations of short lived species along the aircraft flight tracks; and northern hemispheric analyses of potential vorticity, temperature, geopotential, horizontal winds, and radiative heating rates.

This dataset is public and can be accessed from the BADC archives

The data are held on CD-ROM at the BADC and are available for browsing purposes.If you want to use the data in earnest you should order a copy of the CD from one of the contact addresses listed below.

All files within this release are standard MS-DOS ASCII files with variable length records. In general, the file naming convention uses a two-character prefix to identify the measurement, followed by a six digit number (yymmdd) giving the year, month, and day (UT) of the flight, balloon launch, or model result. To identify the measurement platform, a three character extension of EA1, DA1, Bhh, or Ghh is used to denote the data is from the ER-2, DC-8, balloon, or grid point model output (hh denotes the UT hour of balloon launch or model result). Exceptions to this convention are the SFyymmdd.Enn files which use the extensions E00, E01, E05, E30 to denote aerosol loading factors; the TOMS data files which have the extensions N7; and the chemical modelling result MA911006.H00.

The documentation on the CD-ROM has been extracted and made available through this WWW interface. This gives an inventory of the data on the CD and an outline of the data format.

There is a special issue of Geophysics Research Letters (Volume 20, number 22 - November 1993) devoted to the AASE campaign. A paper by Anderson and Toon in that issue contains an overview of the mission and its objectives.

We have also listed a number of other references which you may find useful.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, [Gaines, S.; Hipskind, S.; Baumgardner, D.; Blake, D.R.; Browell, E.V.; Chan, K.R.; Coffey, M.T.; Dye, J.E.; Elkins, J.W.; Fahey, D.W.; Ferry, G.V.; Gary, B.L.; Goodman, J.; Hathaway, P.; Heidt, L.E.; Kelly, K.E.; Krueger, A.; Lait, L.R.; Loewenstein, M.; Margitan, J.J.; Mankin, W.G.; May, R.D.; Newman, P.A.; Pfister, L.; Podolske, J.R.; Proffitt, M.H.; Pueschel, R.F.; Ridley, B.A.; Rowland, F.S.; Rosenfield, J.; Russell, P.B.; Sachse, G.; Schoeberl, M.R.; Toohey, D.W.; Toon, G.C.; Traub, W.A.; Valero, F.P.J.; Vedder, J.F.; Walega, J.G.; Webster, C.R.; Weinheimer, A.J.; Wilson, J.C.; Wofsy, S.C.] . Airborne Arctic Stratospheric Expedition II (AASE II), [Internet]. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1992, Date of citation. Available from http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/view/badc.nerc.ac.uk__ATOM__dataent_AASE2

If you have queries about these pages then you should contact BADC Support. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.

If you would like to obtain a copy of the CD ROM you should contact Steven Gaines, Steve Hipskind or Patti Hathaway at the NASA Ames Research Center