Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 5 km Aerosol Layer Data, V4-20

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

CAL_LID_L2_05kmALay-Standard-V4-20 is the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Lidar Level 2 5 km Aerosol Layer Data, Version 4-20 data product. This data product was collected using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument. Data generation and distribution of this V4.20 product ended on July 1, 2020, to support a change in the operating system of the CALIPSO production clusters. The V4.21 data product covers July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2023. Within the Lidar Aerosol Layer Product, there are two general classes of data:- Column Properties (including position data and viewing geometry) and Layer Properties. The lidar layer products consist of a sequence of column descriptors, each one of which is associated with a variable number of layer descriptors. The column descriptors specify the temporal and geophysical location of the column of the atmosphere through which a given lidar pulse travels. Also included in the column descriptors are indicators of surface lighting conditions, information about the surface type, and the number of features (e.g., aerosol layers) identified within the column. CALIPSO was launched on April 28, 2006, and continues to collect data necessary to study the impact of clouds and aerosols on the Earth's radiation budget and climate. It flies in the international A-Train constellation for coincident Earth observations. The CALIPSO satellite comprises three instruments: CALIOP, Imaging Infrared Radiometer (IIR), and Wide Field Camera (WFC). CALIPSO is a joint satellite mission between NASA and the French Agency CNES (Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales).

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.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 9, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 9, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/LID_L2_05KMALAY-STANDARD-V4-20
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
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 1abe7a60-5f69-4b3f-af8b-126cc70bb1f6
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://science.nasa.gov/mission/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, -1.8183749 km;39.79567 km
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 5b9789828011b671b818e3831c0edd057b4ab248676065b0851b2a72415ddeae
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2006-06-12/2006-06-12

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.