CALIPSO Wide Field Camera Radiance and Reflectance Data at 1 km Resolution

CALIPSO Wide Field Camera Level 1B data provides calibrated radiance and bidirectional reflectance measurements on a 1 km Earth-based grid. The dataset is produced by the joint NASA and French CNES CALIPSO mission, which launched in 2006 and flies in the A-Train satellite constellation. Version 3.01 data includes new metadata parameters like Orbit Number and Path Number for improved subsetting.

Use Cases

• Analyze calibrated radiance values to map cloud optical properties and distribution across daylight orbital segments.
• Use bidirectional reflectance data registered to a 61 km swath grid to study surface-atmosphere interactions.
• Leverage Orbit Number and Path Number metadata for precise spatial and temporal subsetting and co-registration with other A-Train sensor data.
• Investigate aerosol types and loading by analyzing spectral signatures from the Wide Field Camera's calibrated measurements.

Strengths

• Data covers a full 61 km swath centered on the satellite's lidar ground track.
• Version 3.01 includes corrections for software bugs and new metadata parameters.

Limitations

• Data acquisition is limited to daylight portions of the CALIPSO orbit, creating temporal gaps.
• The last update for this version was in 2011, indicating the dataset is not actively updated.
• Specific sample size, row count, and file size metrics are unavailable.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC), from the joint NASA-CNES CALIPSO satellite mission.

Collection Method

Data collected by the Wide Field Camera (WFC) instrument onboard the CALIPSO satellite during its orbit.

Time Range

Coverage begins after the CALIPSO launch on April 28, 2006; specific end date is null.

Freshness

Last updated 2011-11-01; update frequency is null.

Geography

Global coverage along the satellite's orbital track, specifically the daylight segments.