AirMSPI Polarimetric Radiance Data from RADEX Flight Campaign

AirMSPI Level 1B2 products contain radiometric and polarimetric images of clouds, aerosols, and the Earth's surface. The dataset includes map-projected data at 8 wavelengths from 355 to 935 nm, acquired during the Radar Definition Experiment flight campaign based in Washington from November 10 to December 13, 2015. It was produced by the LARC_ASDC organization.

Use Cases

• Retrieve aerosol optical properties by analyzing radiance and degree of linear polarization (DOLP) across the 470, 660, and 865 nm bands.
• Model cloud microphysics using multi-spectral radiance data from 8 wavelengths combined with solar and view zenith/azimuth angles.
• Validate satellite sensor algorithms by comparing AirMSPI's terrain-projected Stokes parameters Q and U against other observational datasets.
• Study surface reflectance anisotropy with georegistered radiance maps at different solar and view geometries.
• Fuse polarimetric data with radar measurements for improved cloud characterization, as per the RADEX campaign's objective.

Strengths

• Provides polarimetric data (Stokes Q, U, DOLP, AOLP) for three specific wavelengths (470, 660, 865 nm).
• Includes multi-angle observations with solar zenith, solar azimuth, view zenith, and view azimuth for all spectral bands.
• Covers a defined temporal period of approximately one month during a focused instrument campaign.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to a single campaign from late 2015, making the data potentially stale for current atmospheric conditions.
• Spatial coverage is restricted to the flight paths and targets of the RADEX campaign based in Washington, not globally representative.
• Data format is HDF-EOS-5, which requires specific libraries or tools for access and processing.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata via the LARC_ASDC (Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center).

Collection Method

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

Time Range

2015-11-10 to 2015-12-13

Freshness

Data acquisition ended on 2015-12-13; no update frequency is specified.

Geography

Flight campaign based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; specific targets acquired during flights.