2. Frequently asked questions about the TOAR Data Portal

The TOAR Data Portal is accessible at https://toar-data.org. It is the home of tropospheric ozone data.

2.1. What functions does the TOAR Data Portal offer?

toar-data.org provides the links to several sources of satellite, surface, aircraft, and ozone sonde & LiDAR data. In addition, it gives information on how to contribute data to the TOAR data base and on how to contribute to TOAR science.

2.2. Which data sources are linked from the TOAR Data Portal?

Currently the following sources are linked (click on the links below to see its contents):

2.3. How I can registered my data on TOAR data portal?

The TOAR data portal is maintained as a voluntary effort on a best effort basis. We rely on information from the scientific community to identify and describe the tropospheric ozone datasets which you can see at https://toar-data.org. If you spot a dataset which is not listed there, please drop us that information via https://toar-data.org/contribute/#toar_data_portal_contribute, and we will see if we can add it to the portal. Please note that we can only link to datasets if it is clear that the repository, which is linked, has the necessary permissions to provide the data.

2.4. Do you have a preferred format and metadata profile for data that is listed in the data portal?

No. As we don‘t process your data, any format is accepted. It would be great if the TOAR-II working groups can contribute to the harmonisation of data formats and metadata, but this is out of scope for our data gathering efforts.

Also you do not need to reformat you data, as long as the dataset contains ozone data, it is eligible to be included in the portal.

2.5. What is hidden behind the links to REST API in the TOAR data portal entries?

A REST API is a web service, where you can format the URL with question marks and ampersands and issue commands to a web page. These will then be processed and the result returned to you. The pointer we provide in the data portal will usually direct you to a description page how the specific REST API of that dataset can be used.

2.6. Are you actively monitoring all the pointers in the TOAR data portal in case there are changes on the web pages or services hosting the original datasets?

No, this would be too much work for us. We will occasionally check the links, but we have to rely on you, the community, to provide us with updates or point us to broken links or other errors if you discover them.

You can either write an email to support@toar-data.org or fill in the registration form https://toar-data.org/contribute/#toar_data_portal_contribute again and make a comment that this is a revision and not a new entry.

2.7. Since we are considering precursor information in TOAR-II, will we have links for that?

Given the limited resources that we have for maintaining the data portal, we would prefer to focus on ozone datasets at this point. Adding other species may make the portal less clear and less complete for any given species.
But we already added a link for ozone precursor data from satellites, which will be filled soon by the community.