ATom: In-Situ Measurements of Airflow and Aerosols from Multiple Airborne Campaigns
This dataset provides results of selected in situ measurements of airflow and aerosol particles collected during the following airborne campaigns: NASA Atmospheric Tomography (ATom), Saharan Aerosol Long-range Transport and Aerosol-Cloud-interaction Experiment (SALTRACE), and Absorbing aerosol layers in a changing climate: aging, lifetime and dynamics (A-LIFE). Campaigns were conducted between 2013-06-10 and 2018-05-21. Depending on the aircraft instrumentation per flight and campaign, the data include aircraft position, relative humidity, temperature, pressure, angle of attack (AOA), the probe location, true and probe air speeds, and aerosol particle diameters as extracted from Cloud Imaging Probe (CIP) images for the ATom and A-LIFE flights. Also provided are the results of combining the airborne data with numerical modeling to simulate particle sampling efficiency. Simulations investigated how airflow around wing-mounted instruments affected sampling efficiency and the induced errors for different realistic flight conditions.
The Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital-2 mission to study the impact of human-produced air pollution on greenhouse gases and on chemically reactive gases in the atmosphere. ATom deployed an extensive gas and aerosol payload on the NASA DC-8 aircraft for systematic, global-scale sampling of the atmosphere, profiling continuously from 0.2 to 12 km altitude. Around-the-world flights were conducted in each of four seasons between 2016 and 2018. See all ORNL DAAC data from ATom.
Data Citation: Spanu, A., M. Dollner, J. Gasteiger, T.P. Bui, and B. Weinzierl. 2020. ATom: In-Situ Measurements of Airflow and Aerosols from Multiple Airborne Campaigns. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1784