European Facility for Airborne Research in Environmental and Geo-sciences (EUFAR)

The EUFAR data archive is HERE.

Introduction

European Facility for Airborne Research in Environmental and Geo-sciences (EUFAR) is an Integrating Activity of the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. EUFAR brings together 33 European institutions and companies involved in airborne research, operating 22 instrumented aircraft and providing access to 7 hyperspectral instruments.

To facilitate wide access and to maximise the potential of the valuable scientific data collected during the project a central gateway will be provided. The data itself will be stored either in an accessible archive operated by the aircraft operator or lodged in the BADC archive.

Description of available data

The data available will vary from aircraft to aircraft depending on the instruments on board and the aims and flight patterns for each project.

Access to data, documentation and software

As EUFAR is an EU-funded project, data in the EUFAR archive is available to all users registering with the BADC and agreeing to the EUFAR Conditions of Use (anyone can register). This is an online click-through application. .

Any raw data stored in the EUFAR archive to facilitate the rapid exchange of data within the community for a specific event - for example the Eyjafjallajokull Volcanic Eruption - may remain restricted to the EUFAR community longterm.

Data stored in an operators own archive may be subject to other conditions of use - for example, NERC-ARSF-Dornier data is archived at the NEODC but can be accessed via the EUFAR archive by users who also agree to the ARSF conditions of use. All users are required to acknowledge the data providers in any publication based on EUFAR data.

To access the EUFAR data, please follow the guidelines below.

register as a BADC user — if you are already a registered BADC user, skip this step; if you have forgotten your BADC user ID and/or password, please contact the BADC helpdesk at badc@rl.ac.uk;
apply for access to the EUFAR archive — you will be asked to abide by the EUFAR Conditions of Use
For NERC-ARSF-Dornier data, archived at the NEODC but accessed via the EUFAR archive, please note you must also agree to the ARSF conditions of use (this is for ADDRESS, AIMWETLAB, AIRES-CZM, A.NEW, ARMSRACE, ValCalHyp)

Instructions for Data providers

Please register with BADC as in step 1 above. Then apply for access to the EUFAR data deposit area here.
Once access has been granted (an email will be sent) data can be submitted by FTP to ingest.badc.rl.ac.uk and placed within the /incoming/eufar directory. Please use the sub-directory name of the project that the data was collected for - eg volcanic-ash, icare-qad (ICARE/Quality of Airborne Data). If your project name is not there please request one from the BADC help desk.
From here data will moved to the archive by BADC staff. Data should normally be submitted ready to archive as indicated below in 'Data format and Filenames'.

Data format and Filenames

EUFAR processed data stored in the BADC archive should be in NetCDF format however HDF format may also be used. Data stored in an operator's own archive will be in the format specified by that operator.

Some software to read, manipulate and convert these formats into each other are provided by the BADC or other agencies (see "Links" section below).

Files should be named according to the BADC filename convention. The file-naming convention uses long file names since these indicate significant information about the contents of the file without having to read the file or refer to the directory structure. Important attributes in a file name include INSTRUMENT, LOCATION(=aircraft) and TIME and takes the form of instrument_aircraft_YYYYMMDD[hh][mm][ss][_extra].ext
The attributes INSTRUMENT and LOCATION (=aircraft) are included in the current list. All EUFAR aircraft are already included in this list, if you need assistance please contact the BADC help desk who will be happy to help.

Documentation and Tools

Documentation about the EUFAR data may be found via the document directory

Links to further or related information

The EUFAR website
The Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) Web site – BAe-146-301 aircraft
FAAM data archive at BADC
The joint NERC-DLR Airborne Remote Sensing Facility (ARSF) – Dornier 228-101 aircraft (Do-228)
Software for Manipulating or Displaying NetCDF Data. A fairly complete list of existing freely available and commercial or licensed software packages to write, read and handle NetCDF files, provided by Unidata.
Igor software to read NetCDF files. See also routines provided by Jonathan Crosier (University of Manchester) in the BADC FAAM software archive.
Downloadable AEROS software to read NetCDF files (includes a version for Linux and a version for Windows).

Who to contact

Any query regarding the data should be sent to the BADC help desk.

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