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

CATS-ISS Level 2 Operational Night Mode data provides vertical profiles of atmospheric aerosols and clouds measured by a lidar instrument on the International Space Station. The collection spans from February 12, 2015 to February 13, 2015, with data derived at 60m vertical and 5km horizontal resolution. The instrument was launched by NASA on January 10, 2015 and operated from an orbit between approximately 230 and 270 miles above Earth.

Use Cases

• Analyze diurnal cloud changes based on observations of the same Earth location at different times each day.
• Study vertical aerosol distribution based on range-resolved profile measurements.
• Model atmospheric effects based on geophysical parameters derived from lidar data.
• Validate climate simulations based on high-resolution (60m vertical, 5km horizontal) atmospheric profiles.

Strengths

• Provides vertical profiles at three wavelengths, offering multi-spectral data.
• Data has a specified high resolution of 60 meters vertically and 5 kilometers horizontally.
• Collection offers a specific temporal coverage from February 12 to February 13, 2015.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset covers a very short time range of approximately two days.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data derived from Level 1 measurements from the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) lidar instrument on the International Space Station.

Time Range

February 12, 2015 to February 13, 2015

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 08:55:37.937779; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from ISS orbit between ~230 and ~270 miles altitude at 51-degree inclination.