Summary

Description

The GOZCARDS Merged Data for Nitrous Oxide Monthly Zonal Averages on a Geodetic Latitude and Pressure Grid product (GozMmlpN2O) contains zonal means and related information (standard deviation, minimum/maximum value, etc.), calculated as a result of a merging process that ties together the source datasets, after bias removal and averaging. The merged N2O data are from the following satellite instruments: ACE-FTS (v2.2u; 2004 - onward), and Aura MLS (v3.3; 2004 - onward). The vertical pressure range for N2O is from 147 to 0.5 hPa. The input source data used to create this merged product are contained in a separate data product with the short name GozSmlpN2O. The GozMmlpN2O merged data are written using the new netCDF4 enhanced model using CF-1 metadata attributes. The data variables are organized into a Group hierarchy structure. Global Attributes describing the data file (e.g. data start/end time, spatial extent, etc.) are located at the file/root level. Users can use netCDF enabled tools to view the data. Since netCDF4 is based on the HDF5 format, HDF5 readers will also work with these data files. Parameters contained in the data files include the following: Variable Name |Description |Units /Merged/average |Nitrous Oxide Merged Zonal Average |(mol/mol) End of parameter information GOZCARDS (Global OZone Chemistry And Related trace gas Data records for the Stratosphere) refers 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.