CALIPSO Satellite Infrared Radiometer Swath Data

CALIPSO's Infrared Imaging Radiometer provides emissivity and cloud particle data on a 1 km grid along the satellite track. This Level 2 product, version 4-51, is produced by the joint NASA and French CNES mission launched in 2006. Data is managed by the LARC_ASDC organization and was last updated in mid-2023.

Use Cases

• Analyze cloud particle properties using the 1 km gridded emissivity data.
• Study aerosol-cloud interactions by correlating IIR pixel data with co-located lidar profiles.
• Validate climate model outputs for cloud radiative effects with satellite-observed emissivity.
• Map global distributions of specific cloud types using the infrared radiometry data.

Strengths

• Data is assigned to a consistent 1 km grid centered on the lidar track.
• Product is part of a long-running satellite mission providing over 17 years of observations.
• Derived from a calibrated instrument on a dedicated NASA-CNES climate satellite.

Limitations

• Specific row count, column details, and sample size are unknown.
• Spatial coverage is limited to the narrow swath along the CALIPSO satellite track.
• Data freshness depends on processing pipelines; the underlying observations may be older.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) mission.

Collection Method

Collected by the CALIPSO Infrared Imaging Radiometer (IIR) instrument.

Time Range

Mission data collection began after launch on April 28, 2006; specific temporal coverage for this product version is null.

Freshness

Product metadata was last updated on 2023-06-30.

Geography

Global coverage along the satellite's orbital track.