NASA CARAFE Project: Airborne Eddy Covariance Fluxes for Carbon and Heat

Two airborne campaigns in 2016 and 2017 collected high-resolution eddy covariance fluxes of carbon dioxide, methane, sensible heat, and latent heat. The NASA Carbon Airborne Flux Experiment (CARAFE) utilized a C-23 Sherpa aircraft with commercial and custom instrumentation deployed across the Mid-Atlantic Region. The dataset also includes downwelling radiation, water vapor, pressure, temperature, wind, and aircraft navigation data.

Use Cases

• Quantifying surface carbon dioxide and methane fluxes based on airborne eddy covariance measurements.
• Analyzing biophysical processes based on concurrent measurements of sensible heat, latent heat, and radiation.
• Bridging scale gaps in flux estimates based on high spatial resolution airborne data.
• Studying regional atmospheric conditions based on included water vapor, pressure, temperature, and wind data.

Strengths

• Includes fluxes for four key variables: carbon dioxide, methane, sensible heat, and latent heat.
• Data collected during two defined campaign periods: September 2016 and May 2017.
• Covers the Mid-Atlantic Region, providing a specific geographic focus.
• Licensed under CC-BY-4.0, permitting sharing and adaptation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data access requires an Earthdata Login account, adding a step before retrieval.

Provenance

Source

NASA Carbon Airborne Flux Experiment (CARAFE)

Collection Method

Airborne measurements from a NASA C-23 Sherpa aircraft with a suite of commercial and custom instrumentation.

Time Range

2016-09-07 to 2016-09 26 and 2017-05-03 to 2017 05-26.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Mid-Atlantic Region