The datasets consist of rescued and recalibrated tropospheric and stratospheric aerosol extinction profiles (β_p (z)) measured at New Mexico, US, (32°47'N, 105°49'W) between December 1963 and December 1964, after the 1963 Agung volcanic eruption (Antuña-Marrero et al., 2022). Measurements were conducted with a searchlight, the lidar predecessor. The rescue procedure re-digitized the 105 original β_p (z) plots (β_p^Orig (z)) from a research report (Elterman, 1966).The recalibration procedure began with the inversion of the original equation used to compute β_p (z) (Elterman, 1966) to retrieve the normalized detector response profiles for each one of the 105 digitized β_p^Orig (z) profiles. Then the cited equation was used in straight form to compute the recalibrated β_p^Orig (z) profiles (β_p^Recal (z)) replacing several of the variables it includes by their updated versions. These include: 1) The molecular extinction profile, replacing the US Standard Atmosphere 1962 with the corresponding daily local sounding nearby; 2) The molecular and aerosol transmissions, replaced with calculations using the MODTRAN (MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission) code in transmission mode; and 3) The aerosol phase function, substituting the one calculated from measurements at the surface in Germany and applied for the entire 2.76 to 35.2 km column, with, for the troposphere, 2.76 to 10.7 km, the AERONET aerosol phase function from White Sands High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF), and for the stratosphere, 11.2 - 35.2 km, the aerosol phase function calculated from a set of particle size distributions measured by the ER-2 in the vicinity of White Sands in early 1964. Errors were estimated taking as a reference the errors determined in the computation of β_p^Orig (z).

This bundled publication contains following datasets:1. Tropospheric and stratospheric aerosol extinction profiles at White Sands - original observationsContains 105 profiles of the aerosol extinction digitized from the profiles plots available in Elterman (1966). The aerosol extinction is given for 58 altitudes, from 2.76 to 35.2 km.2. Tropospheric and stratospheric aerosol extinction profiles at White Sands - daily averageContains 36 daily aerosol extinction averaged profiles derived for each day from the corresponding 105 observations profiles of dataset (1). The aerosol extinction is given for 58 altitudes, from 2.76 to 35.2 km.3. Tropospheric and stratospheric aerosol extinction profiles at White Sands - daily average, recalibratedContains the 36 recalibrated daily aerosol extinction profiles. The aerosol extinction is given for 53 altitudes, from 5.31 to 35.2 km.4. Stratospheric aerosol optical depth at White SandsContains the 36 daily original and recalibrated stratospheric aerosol optical depth (sAOD), computed from (2) and (3).