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tcspcrs·v1·dataset

Airborne cloud radar profiles (TCSP storm mission)

TCSP CLOUD RADAR SYSTEM (CRS) V1
land NASA GHRC_DAAC Level 1B ASCII
In plain English

What it measures. Vertical slices through clouds showing how strongly they reflect radar (a sign of how much and what kind of precipitation is present) and how fast particles are moving up or down, taken straight below the aircraft.

How it's made. Recorded by the Cloud Radar System, a high-frequency Doppler radar flown on NASA's ER-2 aircraft during the TCSP tropical-storm mission.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers understand how hurricanes and tropical storms form and intensify by looking inside their clouds.

What's measured

Spectral/Engineering › Radar › Doppler VelocitySpectral/Engineering › Radar › Radar Reflectivity

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2005-07-05 → 2005-07-27
  • Measured byNASA ER-2 (CRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-97.247, 4.697, -66.343, 21.939
  • FormatsASCII
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The TCSP Cloud Radar System (CRS) datasets consists of vertically profiled reflectivity and Doppler velocity at aircraft nadir along the flight track. The CRS is a 94 GHz (W-band; 3 mm wavelength) Doppler radar developed for autonomous operation in the NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft and for ground-based operation. It provided high-resolution profiles of reflectivity and Doppler velocity in clouds and it has important applications to atmospheric remote sensing studies. The CRS was designed to fly with the Cloud Lidar System (CLS), in the tail cone of an ER-2 superpod. There are two basic modes of operation of the CRS: 1) ER-2 with reflectivity, Doppler, and linear-depolarization measurements, and 2) ground-based with full polarimetric capability. The Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes (TCSP) mission used the ER-2 mode. The TCSP mission collected data for research and documentation of cyclogenesis, the interaction of temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind and air pressure that creates ideal birthing conditions for tropical storms, hurricanes and related phenomena. The goal of this mission was to help us better understand how hurricanes and other tropical storms are formed and intensify.

Get the data

tcspcrs_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="tcspcrs",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from GHRC_DAAC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.