February 12-13, 2015 data from the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) lidar instrument on the International Space Station. The dataset provides vertical profiles of atmospheric aerosols and clouds at three wavelengths with 60-meter vertical and 5-kilometer horizontal resolution. It was produced by NASA's Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC).
Use Cases
- Analyze vertical profiles of aerosol and cloud properties using the 60-meter resolution layer data.
- Study diurnal cloud and aerosol changes by comparing profiles from the same geographic location at different times.
- Validate atmospheric models with geophysical parameters derived from Level 1 lidar data at 5 km horizontal resolution.
- Investigate cloud and aerosol transport using range-resolved profile measurements from the ISS orbit at 51-degree inclination.
Strengths
- Provides high-resolution vertical profiles at 60m and 5km horizontal scales.
- First space-based lidar dataset enabling diurnal change studies from the ISS.
- Contains measurements at three distinct wavelengths for enhanced particle characterization.
Limitations
- Extremely limited temporal coverage, spanning only two days in February 2015.
- Spatial coverage is restricted to the orbital path of the ISS at a 51-degree inclination.
- Dataset size and specific row/column counts are unknown, limiting assessment of statistical power.
Provenance
- Source
- NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (LARC_ASDC).
- Collection Method
- Data derived from Level 1 measurements of the CATS lidar remote sensing instrument on the International Space Station.
- Time Range
- February 12, 2015 to February 13, 2015.
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Global coverage along the ISS orbital path between approximately 230 and 270 miles altitude.