GRIP LASE Airborne Lidar Water Vapor and Aerosol Profiles

August 13 to September 25, 2010 data from NASA's airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) system flown on the DC-8 aircraft during the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment. The LASE instrument measured vertical profiles of water vapor, aerosols, and clouds throughout the troposphere using laser pulses at the 815-nm water vapor absorption band. This dataset was collected to support research into the formation and intensification processes of tropical storms and hurricanes.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical profiles of atmospheric water vapor to study humidity fields in hurricane environments.
• Investigating aerosol backscatter, extinction, and optical depth to assess their role in storm development.
• Validating satellite-derived atmospheric water vapor and aerosol measurements with high-resolution airborne lidar data.
• Studying cloud properties and their vertical distribution in relation to tropical storm lifecycle stages.
• Correlating in-situ atmospheric conditions from other GRIP aircraft instruments with LASE's remote sensing profiles.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution, vertically resolved atmospheric profiles from a proven NASA DIAL system.
• Covers a focused 6-week campaign during the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, targeting specific storm events.
• Data is hosted by NASA's Global Hydrology Resource Center DAAC (GHRC_DAAC), a recognized data archive.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and curation for scientific use.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source, limiting precise technical assessment.
• Sources conflict on the last update date, listing both 2010-09-25 and 2026-03-13, creating uncertainty about maintenance.
• The license is ambiguously noted as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms provided.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Lidar Atmospheric Sensing Experiment (LASE) system onboard the DC-8 aircraft, managed by GHRC_DAAC.

Collection Method

Airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) measurements collected during the GRIP field campaign.

Time Range

August 13, 2010 through September 25, 2010

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:47:07.285960

Geography

Tropospheric profiles along flight paths of the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the GRIP experiment, primarily over tropical Atlantic regions.