Aerosol measurements began at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Global Monitoring Division (GMD) baseline observatories in the mid-1970's with the purpose of detecting a response, or lack of response, of atmospheric aerosols to changing conditions on a global scale. In 1992 ESRL/GMD expanded its aerosol research program to include regional aerosol monitoring stations due to anthropogenic aerosols creating a significant perturbation in the Earth's radiative balance on regional scales. The goals of this regional-scale monitoring program are to characterize means, variability, and trends of climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols, and the factors that control them. In situ measurements of aerosol optical properties (including light absorption, total scattering, hemispheric backscattering, and total aerosol number concentration) are made at monitoring sites at hourly time resolution. The basic aerosol measurement system consists of a nephelometer (measures aerosol light scattering), absorption photometer (measures light absorption), and a condensation nuclei counter (measures particle number concentration). Data from the aerosol monitoring stations are updated several times a day. Following collection of the raw data at the station, the data are inspected through automatic and manual contamination screenings to eliminate contamination from local pollution sources. Automatic screenings use measured wind speed, direction, and/or total particle number concentration to flag contaminated data. Manual screening is more subjective, relying on the station scientist to evaluate the data in the context of automated contamination flags and their knowledge of the site. Data applications indicate the importance of continuing to provide long-term aerosol in-situ measurements for use in analysis of trends and climatologies, evaluation of model simulations of aerosol climatologies, and behavior and validation of remote sensing retrievals of aerosol optical properties. GMD's measurements also provide ground-truth for satellite measurements and global models, as well as key aerosol parameters for global-scale models. Through the Big Earth Data Initiative (BEDI), ESRL/GMD has taken their data collection and converted files into NetCDF-4, a self-describing format.

TARFOX_UWC131A is the Tropospheric Aerosol Radiative Forcing Observational eXperiment (TARFOX) - University of Washington instrumented C-131A aircraft data set. The TARFOX Intensive Field Campaign was conducted July 10-31, 1996. It included coordinated measurements from four satellites (GOES-8, NOAA-14, ERS-2, LANDSAT), four aircraft (ER-2, C-130, C-131A, and a modified Cessna), land sites, and ships. A variety of aerosol conditions was sampled, ranging from relatively clean behind frontal passages to moderately polluted with aerosol optical depths exceeding 0.5 at mid-visible wavelengths. Gradients of aerosol optical thickness were sampled to aid in isolating aerosol effects from other radiative effects and to more tightly constrain closure tests, including those of satellite retrievals. Early results from TARFOX include demonstration of the unexpected importance of carbonaceous compounds and water condensed on aerosol in the US mid-Atlantic haze plume, chemical apportionment of the aerosol optical depth, measurements of the downward component of aerosol radiative forcing, and agreement between forcing measurements and calculations.

The NAMMA Langley Aerosol Research Group Experiment (LARGE) dataset contains data collected from the following in situ aerosol sensors: condensation nuclei counters, optical particle spectrometers, an aerodynamic particle sizer, and integrating nephelometers. These instruments measure aerosol number density, aerosol size distribution, total scattering and backscattering coefficients. These data files were generated during support of the NASA African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (NAMMA) campaign, a field research investigation sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This mission was based in the Cape Verde Islands, 350 miles off the coast of Senegal in west Africa. Commencing in August 2006, NASA scientists employed surface observation networks and aircraft to characterize the evolution and structure of African Easterly Waves (AEWs) and Mesoscale Convective Systems over continental western Africa, and their associated impacts on regional water and energy budgets.

This dataset provides observations collected during eleven airborne campaigns from 2006–2017 and associated input and output from nine widely used chemical transport models (CTMs). The airborne campaigns include ARCTAS-A, ARCTAS-B, ATom-1 and ATom-2, CalNex, DC3, INTEX-B, KORUS-AQ, MILAGRO, SEAC4RS, and WINTER, and they sampled mainly tropospheric air over the conterminous U.S. and the state of Alaska, Mexico, Canada, Greenland, and South Korea and remote areas over the Arctic, Pacific, Southern, and Atlantic Oceans. The CTMs are the AM4.1, CCSM4, GEOS-5, GEOS-Chem TOMAS, GEOS-Chem v10, GEOS-Chem v12, GISS-MATRIX, GISS-ModelE, and TM4-ECPL-F, and the output includes sulfate, nitrate, temperature, specific humidity, mixing ratio of ammonium, the volume mixing ratio of nitric acid, surface pressure, gas-phase ammonia, gas-phase nitric acid, pressure, total ammonium, etc. The observations were collected in-situ from a variety of instruments, including the Aerosol Microphysical Properties (AMP), HR Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS), CIT Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS), diode laser hygrometer (DLH), a mist chamber/ion chromatography system (MC/IC), Particle Analysis by Laser Mass Spectrometer (PALMS), Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2), and UCI Whole Air Sampler (WAS). In-situ data also include latitude, longitude, and pressure. These observations were used to investigate how aerosol pH and ammonium balance change from polluted to remote regions, such as over oceans, and were compared to predictions from the CTMs.

The Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) is a partnership between NASA's Ames Research Center and H211, L.L.C., facilitating routine in-situ measurements over California, Nevada, and the coastal Pacific in support of satellite validation. The standard payload complement includes rigorously-calibrated ozone (O3), formaldehyde (HCHO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4) mixing ratios, as well as meteorological data including 3-D winds. Multiple vertical profiles (to ~8.5 km) can be accomplished in each 2-hr flight. The AJAX project has been collecting trace gas data on a regular basis in all seasons for over a decade, helping to assess satellite sensors' health and calibration over significant portions of their lifetimes, and complementing surface and tower-based observations collected elsewhere in the region.AJAX supports NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2/3) and Japan's Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and GOSAT-2, and collaborates with many other research organizations (e.g. California Air Resources Board (CARB), NOAA, United States Forest Service (USFS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)). AJAX celebrated its 200th science flight in 2016, and previous studies have investigated topics as varied as stratospheric-to-tropospheric transport, forest fire plumes, atmospheric river events, long-range transport of pollution from Asia to the western US, urban outflow, and emissions from gas leaks, oil fields, and dairies.

NAAMES_Aerosol_ShipInSitu_Data are in situ aerosol measurements collected onboard the R/V Atlantis vessel during the North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES). These measurements were collected from November 4, 2015 – November 29, 2015, May 11, 2016 – June 5, 2016, August 30, 2017-September 22, 2017 and March 18, 2018 – April 13, 2018 over the North Atlantic Ocean. The primary objective of NAAMES was to resolve key processes controlling ocean system function, their influences on atmospheric aerosols and clouds and their implications for climate. The ship-based measurements provide detailed characterization of plankton stocks, rate processes, and community composition. Ship measurements collected during NAAMES also characterize sea water volatile organic compounds, their processing by ocean ecosystems, and the concentrations and properties of gases and particles in the overlying atmosphere. Data collection for this product is complete.The NASA North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES) project was the first NASA Earth Venture – Suborbital mission focused on studying the coupled ocean ecosystem and atmosphere. NAAMES utilizes a combination of ship-based, airborne, autonomous sensor, and remote sensing measurements that directly link ocean ecosystem processes, emissions of ocean-generated aerosols and precursor gases, and subsequent atmospheric evolution and processing. Four deployments coincide with the seasonal cycle of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Winter Transition (November 5 – December 2, 2015), the Bloom Climax (May 11 – June 5, 2016), the Deceleration Phase (August 30 – September 24, 2017), and the Acceleration Phase (March 20 – April 13, 2018). Ship-based measurements were conducted from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Research Vessel Atlantis in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, while airborne measurements were conducted on a NASA Wallops Flight Facility C-130 Hercules that was based at St. John's International Airport, Newfoundland, Canada. Data products in the ASDC archive focus on the NAAMES atmospheric aerosol, cloud, and trace gas data from the ship and aircraft, as well as related satellite and model data subsets. While a few ocean-remote sensing data products (e.g., from the high-spectral resolution lidar) are also included in the ASDC archive, most ocean data products reside in a companion archive at SeaBass.

The ABI G16 Deep Blue L3 Monthly Aerosol Data, 1 x 1 degree grid product, short-name AERDB_M3_ABI_G16, derived by aggregating the L3 daily (AERDB_D3_ABI_G16) input data, each M3 ABI/GOES-16 product is produced monthly at 1 x 1-degree horizontal resolution. This monthly L3 (identified in the short-name as M3) product’s statistics that include mean and standard deviation of the daily means are derived from the arithmetic mean values of the L3 daily product. As a mechanism to filter out poorly sampled grid elements, at least three valid days of data in the month are required to populate the monthly grid element. This first release of these products spans from May 2019 through April 2020 with a potential to generate additional temporal coverage in the future. The Level-3 (L3) Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (GOES-16) Deep Blue Monthly Aerosol dataset is part of a 12-product suite produced by an Earth Science Research from Operational Geostationary Satellite Systems (ESROGSS)-funded project. The 12 products in this project include nine derived from three Geostationary Earth Observation (GEO) instruments and three from merged data from GEO and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO)) instruments.The AERDB_D3_ABI_G16 product, in netCDF4 format, contains 48 Science Data Set (SDS) layers. For more information consult LAADS product description page at:https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/missions-and-measurements/products/AERDB_M3_ABI_G16Or, Deep Blue aerosol project webpage at: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/data/deep-blue

The ABI G17 Deep Blue L3 Monthly Aerosol Data, 1 x 1 degree grid product, short-name AERDB_M3_ABI_G17, derived by aggregating the L3 daily (AERDB_D3_ABI_G17) input data, each M3 ABI/GOES-17 product is produced monthly at 1 x 1-degree horizontal resolution. This monthly L3 (identified in the shortname as M3) product’s statistics that include mean and standard deviation of the daily means are derived from the arithmetic mean values of the L3 daily product. As a mechanism to filter out poorly sampled grid elements, at least three valid days of data in the month are required to populate the monthly grid element. This first release of these products spans from May 2019 through April 2020 with a potential to generate additional temporal coverage in the future. The Level-3 (L3) Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-17 (GOES-17) Deep Blue Daily Aerosol dataset is part of a 12-product suite produced by an Earth Science Research from Operational Geostationary Satellite Systems (ESROGSS)-funded project. The 12 products in this project include nine derived from three Geostationary Earth Observation (GEO) instruments and three from merged data from GEO and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) instruments.The AERDB_M3_ABI_G17 product, in netCDF4 format, contains 48 Science Data Set (SDS) layers. For more information consult LAADS product description page at:https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/missions-and-measurements/products/AERDB_M3_ABI_G17Or, Deep Blue aerosol project webpage at: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/data/deep-blue