ACT-America: Airborne Lidar Profiles of Aerosols and Methane, 2019

HALO instrument data sampled at 0.5-second and 1.25-meter vertical resolutions during airborne campaigns over North America. This dataset from NASA's 2019 ACT-America campaign includes profiles of aerosol optical properties, mixed layer heights, and tropospheric methane columns. Measurements were collected from a C-130 aircraft operating out of three bases in the central and eastern United States.

Use Cases

• Modeling aerosol transport and radiative forcing based on aerosol optical property profiles.
• Analyzing boundary layer dynamics based on mixed layer height distributions.
• Investigating regional methane sources and sinks based on tropospheric methane column data.
• Calibrating satellite-based atmospheric measurements based on high-resolution airborne lidar data.

Strengths

• Data includes high-resolution measurements at 0.5-second temporal and 1.25-meter vertical resolution.
• Covers multiple atmospheric variables: aerosol optical properties, mixed layer heights, and methane columns.
• Flights were conducted from three operational bases, providing geographic coverage over eastern and central North America.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the specific 2019 campaign flights.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Airborne measurements from the High Altitude Lidar Observatory (HALO) instrument onboard a C-130 aircraft.

Time Range

June and July 2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 19:36:40.721071; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Eastern and central North America, based from Shreveport, Louisiana; Lincoln, Nebraska; and NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia.