David Winker

NASA Langley Research Center

Global monitoring of aerosols is important not only because of aerosol effects on the Earth radiation budget but also because of potential impacts on air quality, cloud properties, and precipitation. The CALIPSO satellite is providing the first continuous observations of the global three-dimensional distribution of aerosols. CALIPSO was launched in April 2006 and has been acquiring lidar observations since early June 2006. The primary instrument on the CALIPSO satellite is CALIOP, a two-wavelength polarization lidar designed for aerosol and cloud profiling. Analysis of data shows that 70% of CALIPSO lidar profiles reach the Earth surface, demonstrating a significant capability to observe aerosols even in the presence of optically thin clouds. A subset of CALIPSO data products have been publicly released and are available from the Langley DAAC. This talk will discuss characteristics of the CALIPSO data products, data validation, and applications.