ACT-America: Atmospheric Carbon Transport Campaign Flight and Measurement Catalog

From 2016-05-27 to 2019-07-26, the NASA ACT-America project conducted 121 research flights across the eastern and central United States. The catalog compiles flight details, weather conditions, and measurement summaries from two instrumented aircraft platforms over five seasonal campaigns. Data include greenhouse gas mole fractions, trace gases, and thermodynamic variables collected during 1,140 flight hours.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite-based greenhouse gas observations based on coordinated flights under OCO-2 overpasses.
• Studying seasonal and regional variations in atmospheric carbon transport based on five campaigns across three U.S. regions.
• Analyzing planetary boundary layer dynamics based on lidar-derived aerosol layer height data.
• Improving prior flux models for atmospheric inversions based on provided gridded GPP, RECO, and NEE data.

Strengths

• Includes data from 121 documented research flights spanning five distinct seasonal campaigns.
• Covers 1,140 flight hours of in-situ and remote sensing measurements from two specialized aircraft.
• Provides coordinated validation data with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT-America) project.

Collection Method

Airborne measurements from NASA's B-200 King Air and C-130 Hercules aircraft using remote and in-situ sensors.

Time Range

2016-05 27 to 2019-07-26.

Freshness

Data collection ended in July 2019; update frequency is unknown.

Geography

Three regions of the eastern and central United States.