PACE Validation Data for Aerosol and Ocean Conditions in Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay, California, is the focus of a NASA airborne and field campaign designed to validate the PACE satellite mission's sensors. The dataset captures a wide range of aerosol and oceanic states across two planned sampling periods in October 2024 and May 2025. It combines hyperspectral profiling and radiometric measurements from instruments like HyperPro II, 4STAR-B, C-AIR, and C-OPS to provide high-accuracy calibration data.

Use Cases

• Validating PACE OCI sensor aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrievals against airborne 4STAR-B atmospheric transmittance measurements.
• Calibrating satellite-derived ocean color products using concurrent, high-dynamic-range water-leaving radiance data from C-AIR aircraft instruments.
• Assessing algorithm performance for detecting specific marine conditions like algal blooms or riverine outflow via hyperspectral water optical profiles from HyperPro II and C-OPS.
• Studying the impact of diverse aerosol types, including wildfire smoke and long-range dust transport, on satellite remote sensing signals over coastal waters.
• Analyzing seasonal variability in coastal ocean optics and aerosols by comparing observations from the fall (October) and spring (May) sampling periods.

Strengths

• Data collection employs a unique multi-platform strategy combining airborne, surface, and profiling instrumentation for high-accuracy validation.
• Campaign is designed to capture a globally-representative range of conditions, including maritime aerosol, wildfire smoke, algal blooms, and turbid waters.
• Repeated airborne observations overcome spatial coverage limitations of buoys and ships, providing data over a larger domain during satellite overpass.

Limitations

• Key dataset specifications such as row count, column names, and exact file size are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on license information, with one specifying 'other-license-specified' and another listing 'None'.
• The dataset describes planned future collection periods (2024-2025), so actual observational data may not yet be fully available.

Provenance

Source

NASA OB_DAAC, with AOD data archived at the NASA Langley www-air site.

Collection Method

Combined airborne and field sampling during PACE satellite overpasses, using hyperspectral and contemporary radiometric instruments.

Time Range

October 2024 to May 2025

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:59:37.903299

Geography

Monterey Bay, California, USA