The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) mission team announces the final release of all data products derived from the CALIPSO measurements.
CALIPSO was a long-term, highly successful partnership between NASA and the French Space Agency, National Center for Space Studies (CNES). CALIPSO was launched on 28 April 2006 to study the many roles played by clouds and aerosols in Earth’s climate and weather. 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). Immediately after launch, CALIPSO was inserted into the international A-Train satellite constellation, where it was critically important in acquiring an unprecedented array of coincident, multi-sensor Earth observations. On 13 September 2018, CALIPSO began lowering its orbit from 705 km to 688 km (428 miles) above the Earth to reestablish formation flying with CloudSat as part of the C-Train. By mutual agreement between NASA and CNES, CALIPSO concluded all science operations on 01 August 2023.
All science CALIPSO data products are archived and publicly distributed by both the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) and the AERIS/ICARE Data and Services Center (ICARE). For the final data release, the CALIPSO mission added two CALIOP Level 0 data products (CAL_LID_L0 and CAL_LID_L0_PIVB), two IIR Level 1 intermediate products (IIR_L1_CAL and IIR_L1_COR), and two WFC Level 1 intermediate products (WFC_L1_Asm and WFC_L1_Cal). These six products will only be archived and publicly distributed by the ASDC.
For the duration of the mission, the CALIPSO project maintained a public website (https://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov) that provided mission content, documentation, and imagery for both the public and the global science community. After the completion of the project, this site will be decommissioned and the ASDC along with the LaRC Science Directorate (https://science.larc.nasa.gov/CALIPSO), will host the redistributed content at their respective sites.
The ASDC CALIPSO site will provide the portal to order all CALIPSO data products and will host a number of publicly available documents pertaining to multiple facets of the mission and data products. These documents include significantly expanded versions of web pages previously available on the CALIPSO project site (e.g., data product descriptions, data quality summaries, frequently asked questions, etc.) and are now updated to fully describe the content of all final release data products.
CALIPSO browse images, previously hosted on the CALIPSO project website, will now be posted on the ASDC CALIPSO site. The final data products are listed below:
Lidar (CALIOP)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 0 Version 1-00
(CAL_LID_L0-Standard-V1-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 0 Payload Instrument Verification and Block (PIVB) Version 1-00
(CAL_LID_L0_PIVB-Standard-V1-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 1 Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L1-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 1 km Cloud Layer Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_01kmCLay-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 5 km Aerosol Layer Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_05kmALay-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 5 km Cloud Layer Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_05kmCLay-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 5 km Merged Layer Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_05kmMLay-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 333 m Merged Layer Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_333mMLay-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Merged Layer Diagnostic Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_MLay_Diagnostic-Beta-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 5 km Aerosol Profile Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_05kmAPro-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 5 km Cloud Profile Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_05kmCPro-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Vertical Feature Mask (VFM) Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L2_VFM-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSC) Version 3-00
(CAL_LID_L2_PSCMask-Standard-V3-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol Profile All-Sky Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_AllSky-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol Profile Cloud-Free Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_CloudFree-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol Profile Cloudy Sky Opaque Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_CloudySkyOpaque-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol Profile Cloudy Sky Transparent Version 5-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_CloudySkyTransparent-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Stratospheric Aerosol Profile Version 2-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Stratospheric_APro-Standard-V2-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Cloud Occurrence Version 2-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Cloud_Occurrence-Standard-V2-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Cloud Version 2-00
(CAL_LID_L3_Ice_Cloud-Standard-V2-00)
CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 GEWEX Cloud Version 2-00
(CAL_LID_L3_GEWEX_Cloud-Standard-V2-00)
Infrared Imaging Radiometer (IIR)
CALIPSO IIR Level 1 Standard V3-00
(CAL_IIR_L1-Standard-V3-00)
CALIPSO IIR Level 1 Calibration Version 3-00
(CAL_IIR_L1_CAL-Standard-V3-00)
CALIPSO IIR Level 1 Calibration Correction Version 3-00
(CAL_IIR_L1_COR-Standard-V3-00)
CALIPSO IIR Level 2 Swath Version 5-00
(CAL_IIR_L2_Swath-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO IIR Level 2 Track Version 5-00
(CAL_IIR_L2_Track-Standard-V5-00)
CALIPSO IIR Level 3 GEWEX Cloud Version 2-00
(CAL_IIR_L3_GEWEX_Cloud-Standard-V2-00)
Wide Field Camera (WFC)
CALIPSO WFC Level 1 125m Version 4-00
(CAL_WFC_L1_125m-Standard-V4-00)
CALIPSO WFC Level 1 1 km Version 4-00
(CAL_WFC_L1_1Km-Standard-V4-00)
CALIPSO WFC Level 1 IIR Version 4-00
(CAL_WFC_L1_IIR-Standard-V4-00)
CALIPSO WFC Level 1 Assembler Version 4-00
(CAL_WFC_L1_Asm-Standard-V4-00)
CALIPSO WFC Level 1 Calibration Version 4-00
(CAL_WFC_L1_Cal-Standard-V4-00)
Access Information
For data access and more information, visit the CALIPSO landing page at the ASDC: https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/project/CALIPSO
Access Methods
Users can access this data through:
- NASA Earthdata Search
- NASA Earthdata CMR Virtual Directories
For questions about this data release or assistance with data access, please contact the ASDC User Services team or visit the Earthdata Forum.