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Full catalog/CAL_LID_L2_VFM-Standard-V4-51
CAL_LID_L2_VFM-Standard-V4-51·vV4-51·dataset

What clouds and haze layers are made of (CALIPSO)

CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Vertical Feature Mask (VFM), V4-51
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 2 HDF4
In plain English

What it measures. A vertical map identifying what's in the air at each layer overhead, sorting features into clouds or different kinds of haze and aerosols.

How it's made. Built from the CALIOP laser instrument on the CALIPSO satellite, which fires a laser downward and reads the reflections from clouds and particles at each height.

How & where you'd use it. Studying how clouds and airborne particles affect climate and the energy balance of the planet, and locating layers of dust, smoke, and pollution.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLSATMOSPHERE › CLOUDSATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIESATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD TYPESATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD MICROPHYSICS › CLOUD LIQUID WATER/ICEATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › DUST/ASH/SMOKE

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_VFM-Standard-V4-21 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 2 Vertical Feature Mask (VFM), Version 4-51 data product. Data for this product was collected using the CALIPSO Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument. The CALIPSO satellite comprises three instruments: CALIOP, Imaging Infrared Radiometer (IIR), and Wide Field Camera (WFC). CALIPSO is a joint satellite mission between NASA and the French Agency CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales). CALIPSO was launched on April 28, 2006, to study the impact of clouds and aerosols on the Earth's radiation budget and climate. From June 13, 2006, to September 13, 2018, CALIPSO was part of the A-Train constellation for coincident Earth Observations. After September 13, 2018, the satellite was lowered from 705 to 688 km to resume flying in formation with CloudSat, heretofore called the C-Train.

Get the data

cal_lid_l2_vfm-standard-v4-51_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="CAL_LID_L2_VFM-Standard-V4-51",
    version="V4-51",
    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.