CARVE: In-flight Photos from the CARVE Aircraft, Alaska, 2013-2015

This dataset contains photos taken by scientists aboard the CARVE aircraft during airborne campaigns over the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic for the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE). Flight campaigns took place from 2012 to 2015 between the months of March and November to enable investigation of both seasonal and inter-annual variability in atmospheric gas content.

This dataset contains over 55,000 photos in .jpg format. The photos are packaged into 148 compressed directories (*.gz), with one directory for each flight date.

Project: Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment

The Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) is a NASA Earth Ventures (EV-1) investigation designed to quantify correlations between atmospheric and surface state variables for Alaskan terrestrial ecosystems through intensive seasonal aircraft campaigns, ground-based observations, and analysis sustained over a 5-year mission. CARVE collected detailed measurements of greenhouse gases on local to regional scales in the Alaskan Arctic and demonstrated new remote sensing and improved modeling capabilities to quantify Arctic carbon fluxes and carbon cycle-climate processes. CARVE science fills a critical gap in Earth science knowledge and satisfies high priority objectives across NASA’s Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems, Atmospheric Composition, and Climate Variability & Change focus areas as well as the Air Quality and Ecosystems elements of the Applied Sciences program. CARVE data also complements and enhances the science return from current NASA and non-NASA sensors.

Related Data:

A full list of CARVE data products is available at: https://carve.ornl.gov/dataproducts.html

Spatial Coverage: CARVE flights over the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic

Spatial Resolution: Point measurements

Temporal Coverage: Periodic flights occurred during 2012 - 2015. Photos are provided from August 2013 - November 2015.

Temporal Resolution: Photos were taken opportunistically during flights.

Study Area (coordinates in decimal degrees)

Site	Westernmost Longitude	Easternmost Longitude	Northernmost Latitude	Southernmost Latitude
Alaska and Canadian Arctic	-168.11	-131.75	71.56	58.84

 

Data File Information

This dataset contains over 55,000 photos in .jpg format. The photos are packaged into 148 compressed directories (*.gz), with one directory for each flight date.

File naming convention:  Each directory is named by the flight date as YYYYMMDD.gz, for example 20130812.gz. Within each directory, the individual photos are named with the date and time of the photo, such as CARVE-Photo-20130812213124-00.jpg and CARVE-Photo-20130812213131-00.jpg.

Each photo is marked with the date and time in the image.

All dates and times are reported in UTC time.

 

The CARVE project was designed to collect detailed measurements of important greenhouse gases on local to regional scales in the Alaskan Arctic and demonstrate new remote sensing and improved modeling capabilities to quantify Arctic carbon fluxes and carbon cycle-climate processes. The CARVE data provide insights into Arctic carbon cycling that may be useful in numerous applications.

Not applicable.

CARVE Flights

These data represent one part of the data collected by the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (Miller et al. 2012). A C-23 Sherpa aircraft made frequent flights out of Fairbanks, Alaska between March and November over multiple years, observing the spring thaw, summer draw-down, and fall refreeze of the Arctic growing season. Flights concentrate observations on three study domains: the North Slope, the interior, and the Yukon River valley. North Slope flights cover regions of tundra and continuous permafrost and were anchored by flux towers in Barrow, Atqasuk, and Ivotuk. Flights to Prudhoe Bay characterize the CO2 and CH4 emissions from oil and natural gas processing plants. Flights over interior Alaska sample discontinuous permafrost, boreal forests, and wetlands. A complete list of CARVE flights can be found at: https://carve.ornl.gov/flights.html. Flight paths and atmospheric gas concentrations for CARVE surveys can be visualized through the CARVE Flight Data Visualization Tool (http://carve.ornl.gov/visualize).

The CARVE aircraft carried a remote sensing and atmospheric sampling payload consisting of the following instruments: a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS), and an in situ gas analyzer suite (ISGA) with a gas analyzer and flask sampling system (see https://carve.ornl.gov/documentation.html). All instruments were controlled by a master computer system and UTC time stamped at 1 second intervals.

Photos were taken opportunistically by scientists aboard the CARVE aircraft to document the landscape and conditions encountered during each flight.

Miller, C.E., Dinardo, S.J. et al. (2012). CARVE: The Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment., 2012 IEEE Aerospace Conference. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2012.6187026