Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/CAL_LID_L2_05kmCPro-Standard-V5-00
CAL_LID_L2_05kmCPro-Standard-V5-00·vV5-00·dataset

Detailed cloud layers through the sky (CALIPSO, V5)

CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Cloud Profile, V5-00
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 2 HDF4
In plain English

What it measures. Detailed top-to-bottom profiles of clouds, showing at each height how strongly cloud particles scatter and dim the laser beam. Profiles run from about 30 km altitude down to the surface, with 60-meter vertical detail in the lower atmosphere.

How it's made. Derived from the CALIOP laser instrument on the CALIPSO satellite, which sent pulses down through the atmosphere and measured the returning light layer by layer.

How & where you'd use it. Used for in-depth study of cloud structure and how clouds influence Earth's climate and weather. CALIPSO was a NASA-French partnership that flew in the A-Train constellation until 2018.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD TYPESATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL BACKSCATTERSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › LIDAR › LIDAR DEPOLARIZATION RATIOATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL EXTINCTION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2006-06-12 → 2023-06-30
  • Measured byCALIPSO (CALIOP)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • FormatsHDF4
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

CAL_LID_L2_05kmCPro-Standard-V5-00 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 2 5 km Cloud Profile data product. This data product was collected using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument. This cloud profile product reports vertical profiles of particulate extinction and backscatter, as well as additional information (e.g. particulate depolarization ratios) derived from these fundamental measurements. The cloud profile products are reported at a uniform spatial resolution of 60 m vertically and 5 km horizontally, over a nominal altitude range from 30 km to -0.5 km. Due to constraints imposed by the on-board data averaging scheme, the vertical resolution of the cloud profile data varies as a function of altitude. In the tropospheric region between 20 km to -0.5 km, the cloud profile products are reported at a resolution of 60 m vertically, and in the stratospheric region (above20-km), the cloud profile products are reported at a resolution of 180 m vertically. CALIPSO was a partnership between NASA and the French Space Agency, CNES. CALIPSO was launched on April 28, 2006 to study the many roles played by clouds and aerosols in Earth’s climate and weather. It flew in the international A-Train constellation for coincident Earth observations from launch until September 13, 2018, when CALIPSO began lowering its orbit from 705 km to 688 km(428 miles) above the Earth to resume formation flying with CloudSat as part of the “C-Train”. The CALIPSO satellite carried three remote sensing instruments: the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), the Imaging Infrared Radiometer (IIR), and the Wide Field-of-View Camera (WFC). By mutual agreement between NASA and CNES, the CALIPSO science mission concluded on August 1, 2023.

Get the data

cal_lid_l2_05kmcpro-standard-v5-00_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="CAL_LID_L2_05kmCPro-Standard-V5-00",
    version="V5-00",
    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 LARC_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.