Global 3D rocket launch and re-entry air pollutant and carbon dioxide emissions for 2020-2022

All data compiled are in NetCDF format. These include variables gathered from multiple data sources and cross-checked to obtain activity data needed to calculate air pollutant and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from rocket launches and object re-entries for 2020-2022. There are 4 types of data generated and provided in NetCDF files summarised below. A detailed description of data acquisition and cross-checking, the approach adopted to calculate mapped vertically resolved emissions, the emissions data validation, and a description of each of the variables in the files provided is in the Nature Scientific Data paper submitted for review.

(1) Compiled and cross-checked launch activity data in launch_activity_data_2020-2022.nc.

(2) Compiled and cross-checked relevant information and characteristics of each rocket launched from 2020 to 2022 in rocket_attributes_2020-2022.nc.

(3) Compiled and cross-checked details of each re-entering object from 2020 to 2022 in reentry_activity_data_2020-2022.nc.

(4) Compressed (*.tar.gz) files of 4 folders hosting the emissions. The 4 folders separate emissions into the different vertical and horizontal resolutions on which the emissions are gridded. The compressed files unzip from <500 MB each to >50 GB each and 606 GB total. The uncompressed files are daily files of hourly 3D gridded air pollutant and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions provided for direct input to GEOS-Chem or other models with emissions processing packages that regrid the emissions to the model grid. Emissions files are categorised as associated with all mission types, with non-megaconstellation (nonsmc) missions only or megaconstellation (smc) missions only or all (all) missions and are provided as daily files with the filename convention "byproduct_emis_{mission_type}_{horiz_res}_{vert_res}_YYYYMMDD.nc4". There are 12 sets of daily files for 2020-2022, where { } are used as placeholders for "all", "nonsmc" or "smc" for {mission_type}, "4x5" for 4^o latitude x 5^o longitude or "2x25" for 2^o latitude x 2.5^o longitude for {horiz_res}, "47" for 47 layers up to 0.01 hPa (~80 km) or "72" for 72 layers up to the same altitude for {vert_res}.

Code written in Python used to develop the emission inventory and to generate the NetCDF files is on Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13136856.