CALIPSO Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol Profiles, Cloudy Sky Opaque Data, Standard V5-00

CAL_LID_L3_Tropospheric_APro_CloudSkyOpaque-Standard-V5-00 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 3 Tropospheric Aerosol, Cloudy Sky Opaque, 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 Cloudy Sky Opaque designate indicates that only level 2 columns containing opaque clouds are averaged.

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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated November 3, 2026, 05:16 (UTC)
Created June 3, 2026, 01:00 (UTC)
Identifier 10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/LID_L3_Tropospheric_APRO_CloudySkyOpaqueData-Standard-V5-00
Modified 2026-10-26T22:16:12Z
Theme {"Earth Science"}
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 7c2a36f7-0a6d-4180-be69-514a92897a9b
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash e43a6d01d57ff5dc2d02b20f0684e72975a7979c570445508cb995bc0eaddec3
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, -0.4 km, 12.1 km
temporal 2006-06-01/2023-07-01