IGEL Custom Inventory Generator

Release version 1.0 of the IGEL Custom Inventory Generator. This version was used for the creation of the IGEL 2024 1.0 dataset. The IGEL Custom Inventory Generator is an open-source Python command-line tool for constructing configurable, gridded inventories of rocket-launch emissions for atmospheric research. It was developed in the context of the Inventory of Global Emissions by Launchers for 2024 (IGEL 2024). The generator combines launch-specific propellant-use profiles with engine-specific primary exhaust indices. It regrids the input profiles, calculates primary exhaust emissions, optionally applies altitude-dependent post-combustion parameterizations based on the Commercial Space Vehicle Emissions Modeling (CSVEM) approach, aggregates launches in space and time, converts the results into the selected units and vertical coordinate, and exports CF-1.8-labelled NetCDF files. Users can configure: daily, weekly, or monthly temporal aggregation; horizontal and vertical grid resolution; geographic and vertical domains; altitude-based or USSA1976 pressure-based vertical coordinates; mass, molecule-count, molecule-rate, or volumetric molecule-rate output units; single-file or per-timestep NetCDF output; and optional export of intermediate primary-exhaust and final-emission profiles. The software includes configuration and input-schema validation as well as a verification command for generated NetCDF inventories. Verification covers file structure, numerical sanity, metadata consistency, and species-level mass totals. Large emission fields are processed in bounded chunks to support production-scale inventories on systems with limited memory. This record archives version 1.0.0 of the software. The generator requires Python 3.11 or 3.12 and is operated through a YAML configuration file. The launch list, launch-specific propellant-use profiles, and engine exhaust indices are separate input data and are not included in this software record. The corresponding IGEL 2024 dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21667787 . An interactive visualization is available at https://dlr-igel.github.io/IGEL-2024/, and the development repository is hosted at https://github.com/DLR-IGEL/IGEL-Custom-Inventory-Generator. The software is distributed under the MIT License. When using the generator with the IGEL 2024 dataset, please cite both this software record and the dataset separately.