NASA · NASA-850 · record R0455

Retrieving stratospheric NO2 profiles from OMPS Limb Profiler measurements

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · GSFC: Goddard Space Flight Center

Overview

Development stage: PilotSource: b) Pilot – The use case has been deployed in a limited test or pilot capacity.
High-impact designation: Not high-impactSource: c) Not high-impact
Impact justification: Not reported
Start date: 2025-03-14 (day precision)Source: 03/14/2025 00:00:00
Withheld from public reporting: NoSource: a) No

Mission

Topic area: Science
Operational functions: No function tag matched Derived by keyword rules; see methodology

Problem the AI is intended to solve

Stratospheric NO2 plays an important role in ozone photochemistry. The OMPS Limb Profiler (LP) instrument provides daily near-global coverage; it is currently operating on two satellites and is planned for two additional platforms in the coming years. However, LP is only weakly sensitive to NO2 due to coarse spectral resolution at wavelengths where NO2 absorbs, which prohibits the use of traditional retrieval techniques.

Expected benefits

Additional observations of stratospheric NO2 abundances can improve our understanding of stratospheric chemistry and dynamics. Validation of this work is complicated due to limited availability of observations, but the retrieved profiles show good agreement with state-of-the-art model simulations and the retrieved integrated column shows good agreement with space-borne measurements from Aura OMI.

System outputs

Prediction of NO2 profiles between 10.5 - 45.5 km

Technology

AI classification: Classical / predictive MLSource: Classical/Predictive Machine Learning: Models trained on data to make predictions or classifications based on identified patterns or relatio…
System name(s): NASA Center for Climate Simulation’s Prism GPU cluster
Custom-developed code: Yes
Public source code: Not reported

Sourcing

How it was built: Developed in-houseSource: b) Developed in-house
Vendor (as reported): Not reported
Vendors (standardized): None on the standard list

A vendor is the supplier named by the agency. It does not identify the underlying model or AI technology.

Data and privacy

Involves PII: No
Privacy Impact Assessment: Not reported
Authorization to Operate: Yes
Demographic features: Not reported
Training and evaluation data: 1. OMPS LP Level-1 gridded radiance data product at selected wavelengths 2. Atmospheric temperature and pressure profiles from the NASA Global Earth Observing System (GEOS) Forward Processing for Instrument Teams product 3. NO2 profiles from the GEOS Climate Chemistry Model matched to local solar time of OMPS LP observations
Federal Data Catalog: Not reported

Governance

0 of 8 minimum-practice questions answered. A blank answer means the agency reported nothing; it does not mean the practice is absent.

Pre-deployment testingNo answer reported

AI impact assessmentNo answer reported

Independent reviewNo answer reported

Ongoing monitoringNo answer reported

Operator trainingNo answer reported

Fail-safeNo answer reported

Appeal processNo answer reported

User and public consultationNo answer reported

Potential impacts and how they were identified

Not reported