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Full catalog/CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_AllSky-Standard-V5-00
CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_AllSky-Standard-V5-00·vV5-00·dataset

Haze layers through the lower air, all skies (CALIPSO laser)

CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol Profiles, All Sky Data, Standard V5-00
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 3 HDF4
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly maps showing how much haze and tiny airborne particles (aerosols) are stacked at different heights in the lower atmosphere, including how much they dim light and what types of particles are present. This version averages in all conditions, including when clouds are present.

How it's made. Built from a space laser instrument called CALIOP on the CALIPSO satellite, which fires pulses of light and times the reflections; the monthly averages are derived from already-processed measurements onto a uniform grid.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying how haze and pollution layers affect climate and weather, and for tracking where aerosols sit in the air over time. CALIPSO was a joint NASA-French project that operated from 2006 to 2018.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL EXTINCTION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2006-06-01 → 2023-07-01
  • Measured byCALIPSO (CALIOP)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • 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_L3_Tropospheric_APro_AllSky-Standard-V5-00 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol, All-Sky, data product. This data product was collected using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument. This data product, generated separately between day and night, reports monthly mean profiles of aerosol optical properties on a uniform spatial grid. It is a tropospheric product, so data are only reported below altitudes of 12 km. All parameters are derived from the version 5.00 CALIOP Level 2 data and have been quality screened prior to averaging. The primary quantities reported are vertical profiles of the aerosol extinction coefficient at 532 nm and its vertical integral, the aerosol optical depth (AOD). Aerosol type and spatial distributional information are also included. The All-Sky designate indicates that all level 2 columns are averaged, regardless of the occurrence of clouds. 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_l3_tropospheric_apro_allsky-standard-v5-00_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_AllSky-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.