PACE OCI Level-2: Regional Cloud Optical Properties from Satellite

NASA's PACE OCI instrument provides per-pixel cloud microphysics and macrophysics data for climate applications. The CLOUD data suite includes cloud fraction, particle effective radius, optical thickness, and cloud top properties. This version 3.1 release is produced by the organization OB_CLOUD.

Use Cases

• Screening clouds for atmospheric correction of ocean-color variables based on cloud_fraction and l2_flags.
• Evaluating cloud–radiation interactions based on cloud optical thickness (cot) and cloud water path (cwp) variables.
• Joint analysis of cloud properties with ocean variables like chlorophyll based on co-located geophysical retrievals.
• Classifying cloud phase (ice vs. water) for climate models based on ice_cloud and water_cloud fractions.

Strengths

• Provides multiple retrieval methods for key properties, including cloud effective radius (cer) and optical thickness (cot) from three near-IR band pairs (1.6, 2.1, 2.2 µm).
• Includes core geophysical variables for both microphysics (particle size) and macrophysics (cloud top height, temperature).
• Designed to support specific applications like atmospheric correction and cloud-climate studies as stated in the description.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics for l2_flags and other parameters must be inferred from external product attributes.
• Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML projects.
• Data may reflect geographic or temporal bias inherent to the nasa_earthdata satellite observation platform.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata (nasa_earthdata), organization OB_CLOUD

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing from the PACE OCI instrument, Level-2 processed data.

Geography

Regional coverage (implied by 'Regional' in title), specific area unknown.