Our understanding of the chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere is limited primarily by the lack of accurate measurements of various gases in our atmosphere, gases such as carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and ozone. Since 1983, GTE researchers have measured atmospheric gases from airplanes and ground locations at more than a dozen remote locations around the globe, providing invaluable data to the world's scientists. Another important gas is water vapor, an invisible gas that is present everywhere in the Earth's atmosphere. Water vapor is very important to the Earth's weather, climate, energy balance, water cycle and atmospheric chemistry. Langley was chosen for this archive site because of its research history in these areas and its considerable on-site scientific expertise.
Many people are familiar with flight simulator programs that can be used on personal computers.
Some of these programs can simulate the flight of an aircraft in a very realistic way. Computers also can be programmed to simulate processes that occur in the Earth's atmosphere. These computer programs, or simulations, are called atmospheric computer models . NASA Langley researchers have been developing atmospheric computer models since the early 1970s, incorporating data from Langley's many satellite and aircraft measurement programs.