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AASE2 CDROM

1. Introduction

This CD-ROM contains the final data pertaining to 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.

The data consist of measurements collected onboard the NASA ER-2 and DC-8 aircraft, 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.

All files within this release are standard ASCII files with variable length records terminated by a carriage return/line feed pair (, ASCII decimal values 13 and 10). Therefore, MS-DOS users should be able to read them as they are, but UNIX and Mac users will have to strip off either the or the from each line to convert them to standard UNIX or Mac files. Commercially available software, such as dos2unix and Apple File Exchange, exists to convert MS-DOS files to both UNIX and Mac files. VMS users can define the files to have STREAM record formats.

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.

    • 2. Major changes from the preliminary AASE II CD-ROM
    • Many investigators submitted new and/or revised datasets for this edition. The files DC8TABLE.DOC and ER2TABLE.DOC list the data files available for each flight and indicate whether they are original (from the preliminary AASE II CD-ROM), revised, or new. The variable RDATE on line seven of the file header specifies the revision date for the file. Additionally, the special comment lines, also in the file header, may provide information on the revision history of the file.
    • 2.1 New Files - DC-8
    • 2.1.1 NO - measurements of NO from the NCAR in-situ NO detectors
    • 2.1.2 N2 - measurements of NO2 from the NCAR in-situ NO detectors
    • 2.1.3 TS - optical depth calculations from the Ames Sun photometer
    • 2.2 New Files - ER-2
    • 2.2.1 BR - measurements of BrO from the Harvard ClO/BrO instrument
    • 2.3 New Files - Documentation
    • The format specification files, FORSPEC1.PS and FORSPEC2.PS, have been upgraded to Level 2 PostScript.
    • 2.4 Corrections
    • Some Resolute ozonesonde files were incorrectly named and archived as radiosondes on the preliminary AASE II CD-ROM. A complete set of revised Resolute ozonesonde files have been properly named (RL instead of RS) and now reside in the O3SONDE subdirectory (and have been removed from the RAOB subdirectory).
    • 3. Directories
    • 3.1 The DOCUMENT directory contains several files documenting the contents of this edition.
    • Files: 3.1.1 CONTACT.DOC contains an updated list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of the principal investigators responsible for generating the datasets in this release.
    • 3.1.2 DC8TABLE.DOC contains a record of the available DC-8 datasets in tabular format. Please see the filze header for help in discerning new/revised datasets versus those that are unchanged from the first edition.
    • 3.1.3 ER2TABLE.DOC contains a record of the available ER-2 datasets in tabular format. Please see the file header for help in discerning new/revised datasets versus those that are unchanged from the first edition.
    • 3.1.4 FORSPEC1.PS and FORSPEC2.PS are PostScript files of the document entitled "Format Specification for Data Exchange" which defines the standard file formats in which all data are recorded. These two PostScript files can be printed on any printer that understands PostScript. FORSPEC1.PS contains the title page and table of contents; FORSPEC2.PS contains the bulk of the document.
    • 3.2 The DATA directory has six subdirectories for the DC-8, ER-2, model results, ozonesonde soundings, radiosonde soundings, and TOMS data files.
    • Subdirectories: 3.2.1 DC8 contains the available data collected onboard the DC-8 aircraft, and calculations of potential vorticity, temperature, geopotential, and horizontal wind along the aircraft flight track. Each file contains data for one flight which begins on the UT date indicated by the file name.
    • 3.2.2 ER2 contains the available data collected onboard the ER-2 aircraft, calculations of potential vorticity, temperature, geopotential, horizontal wind, parcel back trajectories, and concentrations of short lived species along the aircraft flight track. Each file contains data for one flight which begins on the UT date indicated by the file name.
    • 3.2.3 MODEL contains 12 Z hemispheric analyses of potential vorticity, temperature, horizontal winds, and radiative heating rates; and one file named MA911006.H00 which contains gas-phase chemistry model reconstructions of several radicals as a function of latitude, altitude, and local time.
    • 3.2.4 O3SONDE contains ozonesonde soundings from the six Canadian launch sites: Alert, Churchill, Goose Bay, Iqaluit, Resolute, and Stony Plain. Each file contains one sounding.
    • 3.2.5 RAOB contains selected radiosonde soundings near the aircraft flight tracks. Each file contains several soundings for a particular time period.
    • 3.2.6 TOMS contains files of global grid point values of total ozone data from the Nimbus 7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) with one file per day.
    • 4. Directory Structure for this CD-ROM remains the same as for the initial release, i.e.,
    • README.DOC in top level directory
    • DOCUMENT
    • DATA
    • |-- DC8
    • |-- ER2
    • |-- MODEL
    • |-- O3SONDE
    • |-- RAOB
    • |-- TOMS