Description
CAL_IIR_L3_GEWEX_Cloud-Standard-V2-00_V2-00 are Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) Infrared Imaging Radiometer (IIR) Level 3 Cloud products for the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud Assessment. The IIR Level 3 GEWEX Cloud product reports global distributions of IIR cloud effective radius and water path averages and histograms on a uniform2-dimensional (2D) spatial grid. Cloud amount, radiative temperature, effective emissivity, and optical depth characterize the cloud samples for which IIR microphysical retrievals are reported. The statistics are reported for atmospheric columns containing only ice clouds, only liquid water clouds, and only high ice clouds of layer pressure lower than 440 hPa. CALIPSO was a partnership between NASA and the French Space Agency, CNES. CALIPSO was launched on April28, 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.
Product Summary
Citation
Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.