Airborne Polarimetric Radiance Data from ACEPOL Campaign

AirMSPI_ACEPOL_Terrain-projected_Georegistered_Radiance_Data contains airborne radiometric and polarimetric imagery from the Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar flight campaign. The dataset provides map-projected radiance measurements across eight wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared, with full Stokes parameters for three polarized bands. Data was acquired by NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center during a three-week campaign from October 19 to November 9, 2017, to support instrument assessment for aerosol and cloud science.

Use Cases

• Calibrating satellite-based aerosol sensors using the high-resolution polarimetric radiance measurements at 470, 660, and 865 nm.
• Analyzing aerosol optical properties by correlating radiance, solar/view geometry columns (solar zenith, solar azimuth, view zenith, view azimuth), and Stokes parameters Q and U.
• Studying surface reflectance characteristics across different land covers using multi-spectral radiance data from 355 to 935 nm.
• Validating atmospheric scattering models with degree of linear polarization (DOLP) and angle of linear polarization (AOLP) data reported relative to two meridian planes.

Strengths

• Provides polarimetric data for three key wavelengths (470, 660, 865 nm) including full Stokes parameters, enabling detailed aerosol particle analysis.
• Covers a complete flight campaign with data acquired across all targets during the specified three-week period from October 19 to November 9, 2017.
• Includes georegistered and terrain-projected data in HDF-EOS-5 format, ensuring spatial accuracy for integration with other geospatial datasets.

Limitations

• Critical metadata conflicts exist: the last updated date is reported as both 2017-11-09 and 2026-03-13 across different platforms.
• No row count, file size, or specific column names are provided, limiting preliminary assessment of dataset scale and structure.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' or 'None', requiring further investigation for usage rights.

Provenance

Source

NASA Langley Research Center, Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC)

Collection Method

Acquired by the Airborne Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI) instrument during the ACEPOL flight campaign.

Time Range

2017-10-19 to 2017-11-09

Freshness

2026-03-13 19:13:17.959333

Geography

Flight campaign based out of Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, CA; specific target locations not detailed.