NASA MSFC Earth Global Reference Atmospheric Model Overview and Updates

Reference or standard atmospheric models have long been used for design and mission planning of various aerospace systems. The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Earth Global Reference Atmospheric Model (GRAM) was developed in response to the need for a design reference atmosphere that provides complete global geographical variability, complete altitude coverage (surface to orbital altitudes), and complete seasonal and monthly variability of the thermodynamic variables and wind components. A unique feature of Earth-GRAM, useful to the aerospace community, is the ability to simulate dispersions in the atmosphere at a rapid runtime. Earth-GRAM 2016 Version 1.0 was released in the C++ object-oriented programming language. An Earth-GRAM overview, recent updates, and data comparisons will be presented to the AMS community.