CAMEX-3 LASE Airborne LiDAR Reflectivity Imagery

CAMEX-3 LiDAR Atmospheric Sensing Experiment (LASE) Imagery consists of plotted reflectivity data collected by a NASA DC-8 aircraft-mounted LiDAR. The dataset covers a 16-day period from August 21 to September 5, 1998, during a campaign to study tropical cyclones based out of Florida. Files are provided in GIF format for browse-only access.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical atmospheric reflectivity profiles for tropical cyclone research.
• Visualizing daily spatial patterns of moisture and aerosols during the 1998 CAMEX-3 campaign.
• Validating atmospheric models with historical LiDAR-derived imagery from a specific flight period.

Strengths

• Data originates from a controlled NASA field campaign (CAMEX-3) with a clear scientific purpose.
• Provides a consistent daily time series over a 16-day operational window.
• Collected using the specialized LASE instrument onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Limitations

• Dataset is browse-only (GIF imagery), limiting quantitative analysis of underlying raw data.
• Exact file count, size, and row/column structure are unknown across all sources.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' on Data.gov but 'None' on NASA Earthdata.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Airborne data collection via the LiDAR Atmospheric Sensing Experiment (LASE) mounted on a NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

August 21, 1998 to September 5, 1998

Freshness

Metadata was last updated on Data.gov on 2026-03 13, though the underlying data is from 1998.

Geography

Region around Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, and surrounding study areas for tropical cyclones.