ACTIVATE: Aerosol and Cloud Remote Sensing Data from Western Atlantic Flights

150 coordinated flights over the western North Atlantic were conducted from 2020 to 2022. This dataset contains aerosol and cloud data collected via remote sensing instrumentation onboard a B-200 King Air aircraft during NASA's ACTIVATE project. The five-year Earth-Venture Sub-Orbital campaign studied marine boundary layer clouds, which cover more than 45% of the ocean surface and exert a net cooling effect.

Use Cases

• Modeling aerosol-cloud interactions based on remote sensing measurements of aerosol and cloud properties.
• Analyzing the impact of marine boundary layer clouds on climate based on data from the shallow cumulus cloud regime.
• Characterizing atmospheric conditions over the western North Atlantic based on sampled aerosol, cloud, and meteorological data.
• Classifying air masses based on trace gas measurements for pollution analysis mentioned in the project description.

Strengths

• Data collected from 150 coordinated flights over a three-year period (2020-2022).
• Part of a structured five-year NASA field campaign (ACTIVATE) with a defined science observing strategy.
• Targets a specific and climatically important regime: marine boundary layer clouds covering more than 45% of the ocean surface.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is provided in specialized file formats (BIN, ISO, HTML) which may require specific tools for processing.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Remote sensing data collected onboard a B-200 King Air aircraft during coordinated flight patterns.

Time Range

2020-2022 (flight deployments), project duration January 2019-December 2023.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 06:50:33.843290; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Western North Atlantic Ocean.