ACT-America Airborne Campaign Flight Catalog

Five seasonal airborne campaigns from May 2016 to July 2019 captured atmospheric greenhouse gas data across the eastern and central United States. The catalog details 121 research flights totaling 1,140 flight hours by two NASA aircraft, measuring CO2, methane, trace gases, and thermodynamic variables. Data includes flight paths, objectives, weather reports, and instrument status in CSV, KMZ, and image formats.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite-derived CO2 measurements by analyzing flights under OCO-2 overpasses, referenced in the Flight_patterns_staus field.
• Studying seasonal and regional variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane transport using campaign dates and region fields.
• Analyzing the relationship between weather conditions and greenhouse gas concentrations using detailed weather reports.
• Mapping aircraft flight paths and measurement locations for spatial analysis of gas fluxes using provided KMZ files.
• Assessing planetary boundary layer height and column greenhouse gas measurements from the C-130's active remote sensing instruments.

Strengths

• Contains detailed metadata for 121 research flights conducted over five distinct seasonal campaigns.
• Integrates in-situ and remote sensing data from two specialized aircraft platforms over 1,140 flight hours.
• Provides coordinated validation data with satellite overpasses, specifically Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2).
• Covers three geographic regions in the eastern and central U.S. across multiple years for temporal analysis.

Limitations

• Sources conflict on the last updated date, reporting either 2019-07-27 or 2026-03-13.
• Specific column names and the total row count for the catalog are not provided in any source description.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit details on reuse terms.

Provenance

Source

NASA Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT-America) project, with data from ORNL_CLOUD.

Collection Method

Data compiled from airborne campaigns using the NASA Langley B-200 King Air and NASA Wallops C-130 Hercules aircraft equipped with in-situ and remote sensors.

Time Range

2016-05-27 to 2019-07 26

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:03:39.097584

Geography

Three regions in the eastern and central United States.