ACEPOL HSRL-2 Lidar Data for Aerosol and Cloud Profiling

United States atmospheric data from the 2017 ACEPOL campaign collected by the High Spectral Resolution Lidar 2 (HSRL-2) onboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft. The dataset provides active lidar measurements of aerosol and cloud properties to support climate and air quality research. It was jointly sponsored by NASA and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON).

Use Cases

• Validating aerosol optical depth and extinction profiles derived from passive polarimeter data using HSRL-2's direct measurements.
• Analyzing aerosol layer height and vertical distribution over diverse terrains including urban, desert, and coastal areas.
• Studying the correlation between in-situ meteorological conditions (e.g., pressure, temperature) and remotely sensed aerosol backscatter.
• Assessing aerosol microphysical properties like size distribution via combined analysis of lidar backscatter and polarimeter data.
• Investigating cloud physics and structure through co-located HSRL-2 and Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) measurements.

Strengths

• Data captures a wide variety of scene types including urban, desert, forest, coastal ocean, and agricultural areas, providing environmental diversity.
• Measurements are from a coordinated 2017 campaign involving six complementary instruments on a single aircraft, enabling multi-sensor analysis.
• The HSRL-2 instrument provides high spectral resolution lidar data, a key method for directly measuring aerosol extinction and backscatter.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, file sizes, and detailed column names are not provided by any source, limiting precise assessment of dataset scale and structure.
• The license is noted as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms, requiring users to investigate usage rights.
• One platform lists a last update date of 2026-03-13, which is a future date and conflicts with the campaign's 2017 timeframe, indicating a potential metadata error.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC), in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON).

Collection Method

Remotely sensed measurements collected by the HSRL-2 instrument onboard the NASA high-altitude ER-2 aircraft during the ACEPOL campaign.

Time Range

Fall 2017

Freshness

2026-03-13 20:01:05.841339

Geography

United States, with operations based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California.