Initial performance assessment of CALIOP

Winker, David M.; Hunt, William H.; McGill, Matthew J.

doi:10.1029/2007gl030135

Cited by 1,276 publications

(1,023 citation statements)

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“…The lidar CALIOP (Winker et al, 2007) of the CALIPSO mission provides backscatter profiles at 532 nm and at 1064 nm, at a vertical resolution of about 30 m below an altitude of 8 km and 60 m above an altitude of 8 km. The size of the lidar footprints is about 90 m×90 m. Horizontal sampling is 333 m along the track, and the distance between two orbits is about 1000 km.…”

Section: Airs Calipso and L2 Radar-lidar Geoprof Data And Their Collmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ATrain mission (Stephens et al, 2002), consisting of several passive and two active remote sensing instruments in constellation with the Aqua satellite, provides a unique possibility to explore the geometrical depth and multi-layer structure of clouds. The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) of the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) mission (Winker et al, 2007) is also sensitive to very thin cirrus (such as subvisible cirrus with optical depth down to 0.01) and provides information on multiple cloud layers as long as clouds are optically not too thick. In the latter case, the cloud profiling radar (CPR) of the CloudSat mission (Stephens et al, 2002;Mace et al, 2007) helps to complete the information on vertical cloud layer structure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A 6-year global cloud climatology from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder AIRS and a statistical analysis in synergy with CALIPSO and CloudSat

et al. 2010

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Abstract. We present a six-year global climatology of cloud properties, obtained from observations of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) onboard the NASA Aqua satellite. Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) combined with CloudSat observations, both missions launched as part of the A-Train in 2006, provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the retrieved AIRS cloud properties such as cloud amount and height. In addition, they permit to explore the vertical structure of different cloud types. AIRS-LMD cloud detection agrees with CALIPSO about 85% over ocean and about 75% over land. Global cloud amount has been estimated from 66% to 74%, depending on the weighting of not cloudy AIRS footprints by partial cloud cover from 0 to 0.3. 42% of all clouds are high clouds, and about 42% of all clouds are single layer low-level clouds. The "radiative" cloud height determined by the AIRS-LMD retrieval corresponds well to the height of the maximum backscatter signal and of the "apparent middle" of the cloud. Whereas the real cloud thickness of high opaque clouds often fills the whole troposphere, their "apparent" cloud thickness (at which optical depth reaches about 5) is on average only 2.5 km. The real geometrical thickness of optically thin cirrus as identified by AIRS-LMD is identical to the "apparent" cloud thickness with an average of about 2.5 km in the tropics and midlatitudes. High clouds in the tropics have slightly more diffusive cloud tops than at higher latitudes. In general, the depth of the maximum backscatter signal increases nearly linearly with increasing "apparent" cloud thickness. For the same "apparent" cloud thicknessCorrespondence to: C. J. Stubenrauch (stubenrauch@lmd.polytechnique.fr) optically thin cirrus show a maximum backscatter about 10% deeper inside the cloud than optically thicker clouds. We also show that only the geometrically thickest opaque clouds and (the probably surrounding anvil) cirrus penetrate the stratosphere in the tropics.

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Section: Airs Calipso and L2 Radar-lidar Geoprof Data And Their Collmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A 6-year global cloud climatology from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder AIRS and a statistical analysis in synergy with CALIPSO and CloudSat

et al. 2010

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“…CALIPSO is an Earth Science observation mission that was launched on 28 April 2006 and flies in nominal orbital altitude of 705 km and an inclination of 98 degrees as part of a constellation of Earth-observing satellites including Aqua, PARASOL, and Aura -collectively known as the "A-train". The CALIPSO mission provides crucial lidar and passive sensors to obtain unique data on aerosol and cloud vertical structure and optical properties (Winker et al, 2007).…”

Section: Calipsomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Attenuated backscatter profiles derived by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) on board the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite (Winker et al, , 2006(Winker et al, , 2007 can be used to study the vertical structure of smoke aerosols and to define the smoke layer geometrical properties (e.g. Labonne et al, 2007;Dirksen et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smoke injection heights from agricultural burning in Eastern Europe as seen by CALIPSO

et al. 2010

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Abstract. High frequency of agricultural fires is observed every year during the summer months over SW Russia and Eastern Europe. This study investigates the initial injection height of aerosol generated by the fires over these regions during the biomass burning season, which determines the potential for long-range transport of the smoke. This information is critical for aerosol transport modeling, as it determines the smoke plume evolution. The study focuses on the period 2006-2008, and is based on observations made by the CALIOP instrument on board the NASA CALIPSO satellite. MODIS data are synergistically used for the detection of the fires and the characterization of their intensity. CALIPSO aerosol vertical distributions generated by the active fires are analyzed to investigate the aerosol top height which is considered dependent on the heat generated by the fires and can be associated with the initial injection height. Aerosol top heights of the vertically homogenous smoke layers are found to range between 1.6 and 5.9 km. Smoke injection heights from CALIPSO are compared with mixing layer heights taken by the European Centre for Mediumrange Weather Forecast (ECMWF), to investigate the direct injection of smoke particles into the free troposphere. Our results indicate that the aerosol plumes are observed within the boundary layer for the 50% of the cases examined. For the rest of the cases, the strong updrafts generated by the fires resulted to smoke injection heights greater than the ECMWF estimated mixing layer by 0.5 to 3.0 km, indicating a direct smoke injection into the free troposphere. The smoke injecCorrespondence to: V. Amiridis (vamoir@space.noa.gr) tion height showed a dependence on the MODIS-Land Fire Radiative Power product which is indicative of the fire intensity, especially in the cases of lower static stability in the upper part of the boundary layer and the free troposphere.

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“…Many of the studies mentioned above have involved the use of Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) space-borne lidar measurements (Winker et al, 2007), which nominally measure backscatter profiles approximately every 300 m along track with approximately 200 m vertical resolution. However, the stratospheric backscatter signal is weak and requires averaging of only the nighttime measurements over several days and typically 0.5 km vertically and 500 km horizontally (Vernier et al, 2011b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Aerosol Limb Imager: acousto-optic imaging of limb-scattered sunlight for stratospheric aerosol profiling

et al. 2016

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Abstract. The Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI) is an optical remote sensing instrument designed to image scattered sunlight from the atmospheric limb. These measurements are used to retrieve spatially resolved information of the stratospheric aerosol distribution, including spectral extinction coefficient and particle size. Here we present the design, development and test results of an ALI prototype instrument. The longterm goal of this work is the eventual realization of ALI on a satellite platform in low earth orbit, where it can provide high spatial resolution observations, both in the vertical and cross-track. The instrument design uses a large-aperture acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) to image the sunlit stratospheric limb in a selectable narrow wavelength band ranging from the visible to the near infrared. The ALI prototype was tested on a stratospheric balloon flight from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) launch facility in Timmins, Canada, in September 2014. Preliminary analysis of the hyperspectral images indicates that the radiance measurements are of high quality, and we have used these to retrieve vertical profiles of stratospheric aerosol extinction coefficient from 650 to 1000 nm, along with one moment of the particle size distribution. Those preliminary results are promising and development of a satellite prototype of ALI within the Canadian Space Agency is ongoing.

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Initial performance assessment of CALIOP

Cited by 1,276 publications

References 10 publications

A 6-year global cloud climatology from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder AIRS and a statistical analysis in synergy with CALIPSO and CloudSat

A 6-year global cloud climatology from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder AIRS and a statistical analysis in synergy with CALIPSO and CloudSat

Smoke injection heights from agricultural burning in Eastern Europe as seen by CALIPSO

The Aerosol Limb Imager: acousto-optic imaging of limb-scattered sunlight for stratospheric aerosol profiling

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