AirMSPI Polarimetric Radiance Data from the CalWater-2 Atmospheric River Campaign

AirMSPI_CalWater-2_Ellipsoid-projected_Georegistered_Radiance_Data contains airborne polarimetric and radiometric imagery from the NASA-led CalWater-2 flight campaign. The dataset provides map-projected radiance measurements at eight wavelengths (355-935 nm), with full Stokes parameters (Q, U, DOLP, AOLP) for the 470, 660, and 865 nm bands. Data was acquired by the AirMSPI instrument aboard NASA's ER-2 aircraft from January 20 to February 24, 2015, focusing on atmospheric rivers and aerosol interactions off the California coast.

Use Cases

• Analyzing aerosol properties and cloud composition using multi-spectral radiance and polarization data from columns like radiance, DOLP, and AOLP.
• Studying the spatial structure of atmospheric rivers through georegistered imagery captured over the North Pacific.
• Validating satellite-derived atmospheric retrievals with high-altitude airborne measurements from specific wavelengths (355, 380, 445, 470, 555, 660, 865, 935 nm).
• Investigating surface-atmosphere interactions by examining polarized reflectance data relative to the scattering- and view meridian planes.

Strengths

• Provides polarimetric data for three key wavelengths (470, 660, 865 nm), including Stokes parameters Q and U, degree of linear polarization, and angle of linear polarization.
• Data is map-projected and georegistered, facilitating spatial analysis over the campaign's study area offshore of California.
• Covers a focused 36-day observation period (January 20 to February 24, 2015) during a major multi-agency field campaign (CalWater-2).

Limitations

• Critical metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source platform.
• Sources conflict on license information: one platform lists 'other-license-specified' while others list it as unknown.
• Data is stored in the specialized HDF-EOS-5 format, which may require specific tools for access and analysis.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Airborne Multi-angle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI) instrument aboard the ER-2 aircraft, managed by LARC_ASDC.

Collection Method

Acquired during the CalWater-2 flight campaign, a partnership between NASA, NOAA, DOE, NSF, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Colorado State University.

Time Range

January 20, 2015 to February vii24, 2015

Freshness

2026-03-13 19:11:25.894948

Geography

North Pacific region offshore of California, based out of Palmdale, CA.