Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)
Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) is the collective name for nitrogen oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Scientists often group the two together because they have short lifetimes of only a few hours in the atmosphere and react frequently with each other. Nitrogen oxides affect human health in two important ways. Large concentrations of nitrogen oxides can damage the respiratory tract directly and contribute to the risk of asthma and respiratory infections. In addition, nitrogen oxide concentrations are a precursor for ozone production, which causes additional damage. Sources include vehicles, industry, and natural phenomena like lightning. Because of their short lifetime, nitrogen oxides are concentrated near the sources that emitted them and are visible in the animation near urban areas, power plants, and roadways.
Credits
NASA's Global Modeling and Assimiliation Office
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Visualizer
- Joseph V. Ardizzone (NASA/GSFC)
Release date
This page was originally published on Tuesday, September 26, 2023.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, June 3, 2025 at 11:12 PM EDT.
Series
This page can be found in the following series:Related papers
Keller, C. A., Knowland, K. E., Duncan, B. N., Liu, J., Anderson, D. C., Das, S., Lucchesi, R. A., Lundgren, E. W., Nicely, J. M., Nielsen, E., Ott, L. E., Saunders, E., Strode, S. A., Wales, P. A., Jacob. D. J., and Pawson, S. (2021). Description of the NASA GEOS composition forecast modeling system GEOS-CF v1.0. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 13, e2020MS002413. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002413
Datasets used
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GEOS-CF
ID: 1197Knowland, K.E., C.A. Keller, and R. Lucchesi, 2022: File Specification for GEOS-CF Products. GMAO Office Note No. 17 (Version 1.3), 54 pp, available from [https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/pubs/docs/Knowland1446.pdf](https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/pubs/docs/Knowland1446.pdf)
This dataset can be found at: https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/weather_prediction/GEOS-CF/data_access/
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Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.