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ACEPOL Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) Remotely Sensed Data Version 1

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

ACEPOL Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) Remotely Sensed Data (ACEPOL_AircraftRemoteSensing_AirHARP_Data) are remotely sensed measurements collected by the Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) onboard the ER-2 during ACEPOL. In order to improve our understanding of the effect of aerosols on climate and air quality, measurements of aerosol chemical composition, size distribution, height profile, and optical properties are of crucial importance. In terms of remotely sensed instrumentation, the most extensive set of aerosol properties can be obtained by combining passive multi-angle, multi-spectral measurements of intensity and polarization with active measurements performed by a High Spectral Resolution Lidar. During Fall 2017, the Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) campaign, jointly sponsored by NASA and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), performed aerosol and cloud measurements over the United States from the NASA high altitude ER-2 aircraft. Six instruments were deployed on the aircraft. Four of these instruments were multi-angle polarimeters: the Airborne Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP), the Airborne Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (AirMSPI), the Airborne Spectrometer for Planetary Exploration (SPEX Airborne) and the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP). The other two instruments were lidars: the High Spectral Resolution Lidar 2 (HSRL-2) and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL). The ACEPOL operation was based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale California, which enabled observations of a wide variety of scene types, including urban, desert, forest, coastal ocean and agricultural areas, with clear, cloudy, polluted and pristine atmospheric conditions. The primary goal of ACEPOL was to assess the capabilities of the different polarimeters for retrieval of aerosol and cloud microphysical and optical parameters, as well as their capabilities to derive aerosol layer height (near-UV polarimetry, O2 A-band). ACEPOL also focused on the development and evaluation of aerosol retrieval algorithms that combine data from both active (lidar) and passive (polarimeter) instruments. ACEPOL data are appropriate for algorithm development and testing, instrument intercomparison, and investigations of active and passive instrument data fusion, which is a valuable resource for remote sensing communities as they prepare for the next generation of spaceborne MAP and lidar missions.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/SUBORBITAL/ACEPOL2017/AircraftRemoteSensing_AirHARP_Data_1
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id dc801d24-88f3-4459-bb11-a9ab9457d28e
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":25,"Longitude":-130},{"Latitude":25,"Longitude":-100},{"Latitude":45,"Longitude":-100},{"Latitude":45,"Longitude":-130},{"Latitude":25,"Longitude":-130}}}, Maximum Altitude, 9999.9 Meters
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 15457bb3075de11d0376e26428dca438b1badf2b09f83b3617c07aa8c300db8a
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2017-10-18/2020-11-20

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