Version 8 TOMS Ozone, Aerosols, & Reflectivity DVD

Ozone, Aerosols, Reflectivity & UV DVD

INTRODUCTION

This 2 DVD set contains reprocessed Version 8 data for ozone, aerosol, reflectivity, and erythemal UV, along with images from the TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) instrument. The first TOMS instrument flew onboard the Nimbus 7 spacecraft and has data for the period from November of 1978 through April 6, 1993 when the instrument failed. Data for the Meteor 3 TOMS instrument (8/1991 - 12/1994) have not yet been processed. You might check the TOMS web site for updates. TOMS also flew on the Earth Probe spacecraft from July 1996 through the present.
(Warning: problems with the EP TOMS scanner mirror began in late 2000. While a correction has been applied in the v8 processing, the calibration for the last three years should be regarded as suspect for trend calcualtion purposes. Preliminary validation indicates a possible 2% error in 2002 and 2003.
A new Version 8 of the algorithm has been developed by NASA Goddard's Ozone Processing Team to address errors associated with extreme conditions in the TOMS measurement archive. The bulk characteristics of new Version 8 TOMS dataset do not differ significantly from the previous Version 7, though a calibration shift for the Earth Probe instrument changes the long term ozone trend somewhat. But, definite improvements are apparent for conditions like high tropospheric aerosol loading, sun-glint, persistent snow/ice, and very high solar zenith angles. Ozone trend data from Version 8 should be more accurate.
Data are given as daily files of gridded ozone, reflectivity, and erythemal UV data and as aerosol index data. The data files can be read with any standard text reader or wordprocessing software. The images are PNG files which can be read by any standard image viewer. Ozone images are also in TIF format.
At the time this DVD set is being produced (Spring 2004), Earth Probe TOMS is still functioning normally.

DVD Documents: Understanding the Version 8 Algorithm, TOMS Data & Images

DVD Vol I Index and DVD Vol II Index.
Version 8 Total Ozone Algorithm : Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents (Adobe Acrobat Documents)
DATA & IMAGES INTERFACE (Nimbus-7 or EP) pops up a retrieval table to get TOMS data products.
Data Coverage (Nimbus-7: 1978 to 1993 or EP: 1996 to 2003) explains the missing data and other operational features.
Data File Format defines the daily data files.
Image Explanation shows how to read a TOMS image.

Links:

For more information, contact:

OZONE: Dr. Richard McPeters, EP-TOMS Principal Investigator

AEROSOL: Dr. Jay Herman, Triana Project Scientist

WWW: Changwoo Ahn , SSAI
Last revised : April 07, 2004