CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Cloud Profile, V5-00

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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated August 11, 2026, 00:04 (UTC)
Created June 3, 2026, 01:00 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 6f587f82-b270-4bc8-bc6c-0a87991ec217
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/CAL_LID_L2_05kmCPro-Standard-V5-00
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-08-03T22:16:03Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash ad08e65010388c505d3def7a999e2336c8a322dcccc0fe40c4083096e1fab628
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"Boundary": {"Points": [{"Latitude": -90, "Longitude": -180}, {"Latitude": -90, "Longitude": 180}, {"Latitude": 90, "Longitude": 180}, {"Latitude": 90, "Longitude": -180}, {"Latitude": -90, "Longitude": -180}]}}]], Minimum Altitude, Maximum Altitude, -0.5 km, 30 km
temporal 2006-06-12/2023-06-30
theme {"Earth Science"}