Our Mission

To be a leading provider of atmospheric science data products and services to the science community through agility, innovation, and technical excellence.

Our Story

The Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) is in the Science Directorate located at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), in Hampton, Virginia. The Science Directorate's Climate Science Branch, Atmospheric Composition Branch, and Chemistry and Dynamics Branch work with ASDC to study changes in the Earth and its atmosphere. Data products translate those findings into meaningful knowledge that inspires action by scientists, educators, decision makers, and the public. The ASDC supports over 60 projects and provides access to more than 1000 archived collections. These data sets were created from satellite measurements, field experiments, and modeled data products. The ASDC projects focus on the Earth science disciplines Radiation Budget, Clouds, Aerosols, and Tropospheric Composition.

The Data Center was established in 1991 to support the Earth Observing System (EOS) as part of NASA's Earth Science enterprise and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and is one of several Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) sponsored by NASA as part of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). The Data Center specializes in atmospheric data important to understanding the causes and processes of global climate change and the consequences of human activities on the climate.

All ASDC data are available to the public from the Explore Collections page. Detailed information about the data products, including documentation, ordering tools, and tools for working with the data, are available for each project ASDC supports. Some of the data products include web interfaces that allow direct access to the data holdings for immediate downloading.

Enhanced search and subsetting capabilities are available for CALIPSO, CERES, MISR, MOPITT, and TES data by accessing their individual search applications respectfully. Please visit our Tools and Services page for a complete listing of all data search and order tools accessible from the ASDC.

ASDC customers include scientists; researchers; federal, state, and local governments; educational and commercial professionals; application users; the commercial remote sensing community; and the general public.