KORUS-AQ Aircraft Lidar Ozone and Aerosol Profiles

Remotely sensed ozone and lidar property data were collected by a Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft during the KORUS-AQ field campaign. The campaign was a joint NASA and Korean National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) study conducted over South Korea in May-June 2016. Measurements support research on air quality factors like photochemistry, emissions, and satellite observation strategies.

Use Cases

• Analyze vertical ozone profiles from lidar data to study pollution layers aloft.
• Correlate DIAL aerosol properties with in-situ ground measurements from the campaign's 16 sites.
• Investigate spatial patterns of pollutants over the Seoul Metropolitan Area and surrounding waters.
• Validate geostationary satellite observations of NO2, CH2O, and O3 columns using airborne remote sensing.
• Examine the impact of transboundary transport on air quality using time-series flight path data.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete for the defined KORUS-AQ campaign period.
• Provides vertically resolved atmospheric data from near surface to about 8 km altitude.
• Part of a coordinated sampling strategy involving multiple aircraft and surface platforms.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to a two-month campaign in 2016.
• Spatial coverage is focused on the Korean peninsula, limiting generalizability.
• Specific row counts, file formats, and data granularity are unknown.

Provenance

Source

NASA LARC_ASDC, collected during the joint NASA-NIER KORUS-AQ field campaign.

Collection Method

Airborne active remote sensing using a Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) instrument onboard a DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

May-June 2016

Freshness

Data collection ended in June 2016; it is a static campaign dataset.

Geography

South Korean peninsula and surrounding waters, with focus on the Seoul Metropolitan Area.