CATS-ISS: Lidar Profiles of Clouds and Aerosols from the International Space Station

From March 25, 2015 to October 29, 2017, the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) instrument on the International Space Station collected vertical profile measurements of atmospheric aerosols and clouds. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration produced this Level 2 data product, which provides geophysical parameters at 60-meter vertical and 5-kilometer horizontal resolution. CATS operated at three wavelengths, orbiting between approximately 230 and 270 miles above Earth, enabling the study of diurnal changes in cloud and aerosol effects.

Use Cases

• Modeling diurnal cycles of cloud properties based on the instrument's ability to observe the same spot at different times.
• Analyzing vertical aerosol transport and distribution based on the range-resolved lidar profile measurements.
• Studying cloud-aerosol interactions based on co-located measurements of both atmospheric components.
• Validating and improving climate models based on high-resolution vertical profile data from the ISS orbit.

Strengths

• Provides vertical profiles at three wavelengths, a feature mentioned in the description.
• Offers a unique diurnal observation capability from the ISS orbit, allowing day-to-night change studies.
• Data spans over two and a half years, from March 2015 to October 2017.
• Has a defined spatial resolution of 60 meters vertically and 5 kilometers horizontally.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by the CATS lidar remote sensing instrument on the International Space Station.

Time Range

March 25, 2015 to October 29, 2017

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:49:51.942570; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from ISS orbit (~230-270 miles altitude, 51-degree inclination).