The ASTER dataset for EUREC4A

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is mounted aboard Terra, a polar-orbiting satellite in a descending Sun-synchronous orbit with an Equator crossing time of 10:30 local solar time. ASTER recorded 412 images of trade cumulus cloud fields east of Barbados in support of the EUREC4A field campaign between 11 January and 15 February (Stevens et al., 2021). While the original L1B data is publicly available from NASA EOSDIS, the dataset here includes processed physical variables and geolocation information. Only bands from the visual near-infrared (VNIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) radiometers are available since 2007. The files therefore include L1B radiances from VNIR and TIR bands, together with geolocation information, a cloud mask, and cloud top height estimates. The cloud mask is derived following a method described by Werner et al., 2016. The cloud top height estimates are derived through an infrared-window approach following Baum et al., 2012. Code for processing the original ASTER L1B data is available in the Python package typhon version 0.9.0, subpackage cloudmask.