Airborne Lidar Atmospheric Profiles Following El Chichon Eruption

NASA Langley airborne lidar data collected from July 1982 to January 1984 to monitor the atmosphere after the El Chichon volcanic eruption. The dataset consists of ASCII-formatted measurements from flights conducted by NASA's Langley Research Center. It was archived by the LARC_ASDC and last updated in May 1992.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in aerosol backscatter or extinction profiles from the lidar data to track the decay of the El Chichon volcanic cloud.
• Correlate flight path geospatial coordinates with atmospheric measurements to map the three-dimensional distribution of volcanic aerosols.
• Validate and calibrate satellite-based aerosol optical depth retrievals using the in-situ airborne lidar profile data.
• Study stratospheric temperature or density anomalies inferred from the lidar return signals during the post-eruption period.

Strengths

• Data covers a specific 18-month period critical for studying a major volcanic event.
• Collected using NASA's authoritative airborne lidar instrumentation.
• Provides a continuous time-series from July 1982 to January 1984.

Limitations

• Data is stored in legacy ASCII format, requiring parsing for modern analysis.
• The dataset is temporally stale, with no updates since 1992.
• Specific row counts, column details, and data volume are unknown.

Provenance

Source

NASA Langley Research Center (LARC_ASDC).

Collection Method

Airborne lidar flights.

Time Range

July 1982 to January 1984.

Freshness

Last updated 1992-05-26; no ongoing updates.

Geography

Flight paths of NASA Langley airborne missions, region unspecified.