STAR / SMCD / SPB Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV/2) Project
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Data Products
Version 8.0 SBUV Profile Data on DVD
Introduction
NOAA-17 Satellite
This DVD contains a complete time series record of atmospheric ozone profiles from November 1978 to December 2003 derived from satellite Solar Backscattered Ultraviolet (SBUV) measurements. Data from the SBUV instrument on the Nimbus-7 satellite and the SBUV/2 instruments on NOAA-11, NOAA-16 and NOAA-9 satellites are selected to give a complete time series using the highest quality data available. As discussed further in Version 8 Data Quality and indicated by the Error Codes and the Residue Quality Control (Residue QC) parameters in the data files, the overall data quality varies with instrument and time. Parts of Nimbus-7, NOAA-11 and NOAA-16 have the best quality. The data from the NOAA-9 SBUV/2 instrument are considered to be of poorer quality, and are included only to complete gaps in time not covered by the other instruments. The Noaa09_post92 directory contains data covering the period when there are no NOAA-11 data. The Noaa09_pre89 directory contains data covering the Nimbus-7 out-of-synchronization period. Some overlap of instrument measurements is provided. See Version 8 Data Quality for guidelines to select the best quality data and some discussion of instrument problems that affect data quality.
Description of DVD Data
In the V8DATA directory, there are subdirectories for each instrument. These have subdirectories for each year containing the daily data files in ASCII format. A sample ASCII file shows the beginning of a daily file with eight lines of header and the subsequent first three 3-line data records. As briefly described in the header, each data record starts with 11 parameters relative to the profile, followed by ozone amounts in Dobson Units for 13 layers and finally the ozone concentrations in PPMV units at 15 pressure levels. A brief description of the first eleven parameters is as follows:
| Year: | The four digit Common Era year |
|---|---|
| Day_of_Year: | The day of the year with January 1st equal to 1 |
| GMT_seconds: | The Greenwich Mean Time at the start of the measurement |
| Latitude: | The Latitude (Degrees North) of the measurement |
| Longitude: | The Longitude (Degrees East) of the measurement |
| Solar_Zenith: | The Solar Zenith Angle (Degrees) of the measurement |
| Total_Ozone: | The total column ozone in Dobson Units from the ground up |
| Reflectivity: | Effective reflectivity from the ground and/or clouds. |
| Aerosol_Index: | Significant quantities indicate the presence of aerosols. |
| Quality_Residue: | Average of the absolute final residues (See Version 8 Data Quality). |
| Error_Flag: | Three digit error code (See Version 8 Data Quality). |
Note: a daily file may contain part of an orbit of data from the following day, and some of the data for the start of a day may only appear in the preceding day's file.
These files can be accessed through the Data & Image Interface Table or by modifying one of the sample IDL or FORTRAN 90 programs to read in a day's data.
- V8 Algorithm Description
- V8 Data Quality
- V8 Validation Results
Acknowledgments
The reprocessed SBUV/2 data were made available with support from the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program, Atmospheric Chemistry Element and the NOAA National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services, Product Systems Development and Implementation Program. Support for SSAI contributors was provided under NASA contracts NAS5-00220 and NAS5-01008.