Description
CAL_LID_L3_Cloud_Occurrence-Standard-V2-00_V2-00 are Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) Lidar(CALIOP) Level 3 Cloud Occurrence products. The Lidar Level 3 Cloud Occurrence product reports global distributions of cloud occurrence by counts on a uniform spatial grid. At each grid, the number of detected ice cloud samples is also reported as a histogram of ice cloud layer optical depth. CALIPSO was a partnership between NASA and the French Space Agency, CNES. CALIPSO was launched on April 28, 2006 to study the many roles played by clouds and aerosols in Earth’s climate and weather. It flew in the international A-Train constellation for coincident Earth observations from launch until September 13, 2018, when CALIPSO began lowering its orbit from 705 km to 688 km (428 miles) above the Earth to resume formation flying with CloudSat as part of the “C-Train”. The CALIPSO satellite carried three remote sensing instruments: the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), the Imaging Infrared Radiometer (IIR), and the Wide Field-of-View Camera (WFC). By mutual agreement between NASA and CNES, the CALIPSO science mission concluded on August 1, 2023.