DISCOVER-AQ: Ground Site Air Quality Measurements for Satellite Validation

NASA's DISCOVER-AQ campaign collected surface-level air quality data at the Edgewood ground site during its 2011 Maryland deployment. The four-year campaign involved NASA Langley, Goddard, and Ames Research Centers, along with multiple universities, using aircraft and ground-based platforms. Its primary objective was to determine correlations between surface measurements and satellite column observations for ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and formaldehyde.

Use Cases

• Validate satellite observations of near-surface pollution based on concurrent ground and aircraft measurements.
• Analyze diurnal variability of trace gases based on the campaign's objective to understand factors controlling it.
• Investigate horizontal scales of variability, such as urban plumes, using targeted airborne and ground-based observations.
• Diagnose ground-level conditions influencing air quality by integrating surface, aircraft, and model data.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete for the Maryland deployment, providing a finalized dataset.
• Integrates measurements from multiple platforms: two NASA aircraft, surface monitors, AERONET photometers, and Pandora spectrometers.
• Campaign targeted regions, including Baltimore-Washington in 2011, known to be in violation of National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is specific to the 2011 Maryland deployment and may not be generalizable.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected via targeted airborne and ground-based observations during the DISCOVER-AQ field campaign.

Time Range

2011 (Maryland deployment)

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:13:58.818012; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Edgewood ground site, Maryland (Baltimore-Washington, D.C. region)