ACT-America: L2 Weighting Functions for Airborne Lidar Column-avg CO2, Eastern USA

Overview

Description

This dataset provides vertical weighting function coefficients of the Level 2 (L2) remotely sensed column-average carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations measured during airborne campaigns in Summer 2016, Winter 2017, Fall 2017, and Spring 2018 conducted over central and eastern regions of the U.S. for the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT-America) project. Column-average CO2 concentrations were measured at a 0.1-second frequency during flights of the C-130 Hercules aircraft at altitudes up to 8 km with a Multi-functional Fiber Laser Lidar (MFLL; Harris Corporation). The MFLL is a set of Continuous-Wave (CW) lidar instruments consisting of an intensity-modulated multi-frequency single-beam synchronous-detection Laser Absorption Spectrometer (LAS) operating at 1571 nm for measuring the column amount of CO2 number density and range between the aircraft and the surface or to cloud tops, and surface reflectance and a Pseudo-random Noise (PN) altimeter at 1596 nm for measuring the path length from the aircraft to the scattering surface and/or cloud tops. The MFLL was onboard all ACT-America seasonal campaigns, except Summer 2019. The MFLL-measured column-averaged CO2 values have certain distinct vertical weights on CO2 profiles depending on the meteorological conditions and the wavelengths used at the measurement time and location. This product includes the instrument location at the time of measurement in geographic coordinates and altitude, along with a vector of weighting function values representing conditions along the nadir direction.

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