CALIPSO Lidar Level 1.5 Profile, V1-01

CAL_LID_L15-Standard-V1-01 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 1.5 Profile, Version 1-01 data product. Data for this product was collected using the CALIPSO Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument. The version of this product was changed from 1-00 to 1-01 to account for a change in the operating system of the CALIPSO production cluster.

This product is a continuous segment of calibrated, geolocated, cloud-cleared, and spatially averaged profiles of lidar attenuated backscatter. Data collection for this product is ongoing. These profiles are derived via synthesizing the CALIPSO lidar Level 1B profile and lidar Level 2 5 km aerosol profile products with the lidar Level 2 Vertical Feature Mask (VFM) product. The lidar Level 1.5 standard data product is derived using standard Version 4.11 Level 1B and Version 4.21 Level 2 data products as input.

CALIPSO was launched on April 28, 2006, to study the impact of clouds and aerosols on the Earth's radiation budget and climate. It flies in the international A-Train constellation for coincident Earth observations. The CALIPSO satellite comprises three instruments: CALIOP, Imaging Infrared Radiometer (IIR), and Wide Field Camera (WFC). CALIPSO is a joint satellite mission between NASA and the French Agency CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales).