Space Station Lidar Profiles of Clouds and Aerosols

March 25, 2015 to October 29, 2017 data from the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) lidar instrument aboard the International Space Station. The instrument provided vertical profiles of atmospheric aerosols and clouds at three wavelengths from an orbit 230 to 270 miles above Earth. This Level 2 Operational product was produced by NASA's LARC_ASDC with 5 km horizontal and 60 m vertical resolution.

Use Cases

• Analyze diurnal cloud changes by comparing vertical profile measurements of the same Earth location at different local times.
• Track aerosol transport and layer height using the geophysical parameters derived from three-wavelength lidar backscatter.
• Validate climate models with high-resolution (5km horizontal, 60m vertical) global profile data of cloud and aerosol optical properties.
• Study polar and mid-latitude atmospheric dynamics using data from the ISS's 51-degree inclination orbit.

Strengths

• Provides nearly three years of continuous lidar profile data from March 2015 to October 2017.
• Offers high-resolution vertical profiling at 60 meters and horizontal resolution at 5 kilometers.
• Unique capability for diurnal analysis from space with a three-day repeat observation cycle.

Limitations

• Data collection ended in October 2017, limiting analysis to historical conditions up to that date.
• Spatial coverage is limited to the orbital path of the ISS at a 51-degree inclination, excluding higher latitudes.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and data volumes are unknown from the provided description.

Provenance

Source

NASA LARC_ASDC (Cloud-Aerosol Transport System instrument team).

Collection Method

Data gathered by the CATS lidar instrument on the International Space Station, processed to Level 2 geophysical parameters.

Time Range

March 25, 2015 to October 29, 2017.

Freshness

Final data collection occurred on 2017-10-29; this is a static historical dataset.

Geography

Global coverage along the International Space Station orbit path (~51-degree inclination).