Description

MAPS Overview The MAPS experiment measures the global distribution of carbon monoxide (CO) mixing ratios in the free troposphere. Because of MAPS' previous flights on board the Space Shuttle, Earth system scientists now know that carbon monoxide concentrations in the troposphere are highly variable around the planet, and that widespread burning in the South American Amazon Basin and southern cerrados, the African savannahs,and the Australian grasslands and ranches are major sources of carbon monoxide in the southern hemisphere and tropical troposphere.InstrumentThe MAPS instrument is based on a technique called gas filter radiometry. Thermal energy from the Earth passes through the atmosphere and enters the viewport of the downlooking MAPS instrument. Carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide (N2O) in the atmosphere produce unique absorption lines in the transmitted energy. The energy which enters the MAPS instrument is split into & three beams. One beam passes through a cell containing CO and falls onto a detector. This CO gas cell acts as a filter for the effects of CO present in the middle troposphere. A second beam falls directly onto a detector without passing through any gas filter. The difference in the voltage of the signals from these two detectors can be used to determine the amount of CO present in the atmosphere at an altitude of 7-8 km. A third beam of the incident energy passes through a cell containing N2O and falls onto a detector. This N2O gas cell acts as a filter for the effects of N2O present in the atmosphere. The global distribution of N2O is well known, so the N2O signal can be used to detect the presence of clouds in the field of view and to correct the simultaneous CO measurement for systematic errors in the data. The data that are available from MAPS OSTA3 include a 5 by 5 degree gridded box (MAPS_OSTA3_5X5_HDF) and a second by second data product (MAPS_OSTA3_COSEC_HDF). These data sets are available from the Langley DAAC.

DOI

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Citation Styles for this Dataset

Resources and Documentation

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Earthdata Forum

PROFESSIONAL HOME PAGE

CDIAC Overview of Measurement of Air Pollution from Satellites (MAPS) 1994 Correlative Atmospheric Carbon Monoxide Mixing Ratios

VIEW RELATED INFORMATION

DATA CITATION POLICY

• How to cite ASDC data

GENERAL DOCUMENTATION

• ASDC Data and Information for MAPS
• MAPS 5 degree by 5 degree Langley DAAC Data Set Document

MICRO ARTICLE

• NASA Langley Factsheet for MAPS

READ-ME

• Readme Information about the MAPS sample read software and data files

SCIENCE DATA PRODUCT SOFTWARE DOCUMENTATION

• Sample read program for the following MAPS data sets: MAPS_SRL1_CO5x5_HDF, MAPS_SRL2_CO5x5_HDF, MAPS_OSTA3_CO5x5_HDF - Direct File Download (.c)
• Script that compiles the C code necessary to read the following MAPS HDF data files: 1) MAPS_OSTA3_CO5X5_HDF, 2) MAPS_SRL1_CO5X5_HDF, 3) MAPS_SRL2_CO5X5_HDF

Keywords

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