CATS lidar data captured the first diurnal cycle observations of clouds and aerosols from the International Space Station. This Level 2 Operational product provides vertical profiles at three wavelengths with 60-meter vertical and 5-kilometer horizontal resolution. The collection was created by NASA's LARC_ASDC and covers a specific operational period from February 10 to March 21, 2015.
Use Cases
- Analyze diurnal changes in aerosol optical depth and cloud top height from the same geographic location over successive orbits.
- Study vertical distribution of atmospheric features like backscatter coefficients at 1064 nm, 532 nm, and 355 nm wavelengths.
- Validate global climate model outputs using high-resolution, range-resolved profile measurements of cloud and aerosol layers.
- Investigate aerosol transport patterns and cloud effects on radiation using geolocated profile data from the ISS's 51-degree inclination orbit.
Strengths
- Provides unique diurnal cycle observations from space, a first for lidar-based cloud and aerosol studies.
- High-resolution profile data with 60m vertical and 5km horizontal granularity.
- Data collection spans three specific wavelengths (1064 nm, 532 nm, 355 nm) for detailed particle characterization.
Limitations
- Very short temporal coverage of only 40 days from February to March 2015.
- Limited geographic coverage constrained by the ISS orbit's ~51-degree inclination, missing polar regions.
- Dataset represents a single instrument's operational mode (Day Mode 7.1) from a technology demonstration mission.
Provenance
- Source
- NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC).
- Collection Method
- Data derived from Level 1 measurements collected by the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) lidar instrument on the International Space Station.
- Time Range
- February 10, 2015 to March 21, 2015.
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Global coverage between approximately 51 degrees North and South latitude, following the ISS orbit.