The COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA) provides empirical models of atmospheric temperatures and densities as recommended by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). A global climatology of atmospheric temperature, zonal velocity and geopotential height derived from a combination of satellite, radiosonde and ground-based measurements and model data. The reference atmosphere extends from pole to pole and 0-120 km. The majority of the data are on a 5 degree latitude grid and approximately 2 km vertical resolution.

The lower part (0-120 km) of CIRA-86 consists of tables of the monthly mean values of temperature and zonal wind with almost global coverage (80N - 80S). Two sets of files were compiled, one in pressure coordinates including also the geopotential heights, and one in height coordinates
including also the pressure values. These tables were generated from several global data compilations including ground-based and satellite (Nimbus 5,6,7) measurements: Oort (1983), Labitzke et al. (1985). The lower part was merged with MSIS-86 at 120 km altitude. In general, hydrostatic and thermal wind balance are maintained at all levels. The model accurately reproduces most of the characteristic features of the atmosphere such as the equatorial wind and the general structure
of the tropopause, stratopause, and mesopause.

This data set is a corrected version of the original CIRA data files as provided by J. Barnett (July 1990) in ASCII format.

Additionally a netCDF version of the data were produced by BADC user and added to this dataset.

This dataset is public.