TITLE:
NASA’s Mission ACTIVATE: Objectives, Strategies, and Limitations
AUTHORS:
Shreyas Banaji
KEYWORDS:
Atmosphere, Aerosol-Cloud Interactions, Marine Boundary Layer, NASA, Activate, High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2, Research Scanning Polarimeter, Diode Laser Hygrometer
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of Engineering and Technology,
Vol.10 No.4,
November
4,
2022
ABSTRACT: The primary goal of this report is to describe the operational concepts of NASA’s ACTIVATE mission. ACTIVATE hopes to improve the understanding of aerosol dispersion and models, provide accurate data for aerosols’ characterization and ozone profiles, and establish knowledge of the relationships between aerosols and water. ACTIVATE’s science objectives are to quantify Na-CCN-Nd relationships and reduce uncertainty in model cloud droplet activation parameterizations, improve process-level understanding and model representation of factors governing cloud micro/macro-physical properties and how they couple with cloud effects on aerosol, plus assess advanced remote sensing capabilities for retrieving aerosol and cloud properties related to aerosol-cloud interactions. ACTIVATE utilizes the fixed-wing B-200 King Air to collect data. Data collected by ACTIVATE is highly relevant for meteorologists and environmental scientists looking to understand more about aerosol-cloud formations. Finally, ACTIVATE is a 5-year mission spanning from January 2019 to December 2023 and has used, and will continue to use, instruments such as the High Spectral Resolution Lidar-2 (HSRL-2), the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP), and the Diode Laser Hygrometer (DLH).