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    • CALIPSO Lidar Level 0 PIVB data

    Metadata Updated: February 6, 2026

    CAL_LID_L0_PIVB-Standard-V1-00 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 0 PayloadInstrument Verification and Block (PIVB), Version 1-00 data product. These data were collected intermittently between August 2016 and June 2023 using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). The CALIPSO payload flight software, when commanded, creates Lidar Level 0 PIVB data packets for each of the three channels: 532 nm parallel, 532 nm perpendicular, and 1064 nm. These packets contain the altitude-dependent profiles (15 m resolution) of the raw backscatter signals acquired in the high and low gain channels over 15 consecutive laser pulses prior to being processed by CALIOP’s on-board profile averaging algorithm. Also included in the product are time and position information for each laser pulse, associated instrument engineering data, and an array containing the on-board measurement altitudes. No post-processing is done for the PIVB data, so the backscatter profiles have not been altitude-registered, geolocated, range-corrected, or calibrated. The PIVB data is not part of routine science data capture and is acquired only episodically throughout the latter portion of the CALIPSO mission. 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 ImagingInfrared 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.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 9, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date February 6, 2026

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 9, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date February 6, 2026
    Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/CAL_LID_L0_PIVB-Standard-V1-00
    Data Last Modified 2026-02-03
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 86d3921c-04c2-484f-9372-73cd15f7ebb0
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://science.larc.nasa.gov/calipso/
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":-90,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":-90,"Longitude":180},{"Latitude":90,"Longitude":180},{"Latitude":90,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":-90,"Longitude":-180}}}, Minimum Altitude;Maximum Altitude, -18.4850 km;80 km
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 89ed047779db8fc4918b5fe2d14b4697eb85ed8791d4e8204137eab15a3dc76e
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2016-08-23/2016-08-23

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