CALIPSO Ben Kravitz November 5 2009 What is CALIPSO CALIPSO is among a couple of other things a space based LIDAR Launched in 2005 Flies on the A train What CALIPSO does Statistics on the vertical structure of clouds Geographic and vertical distribution of aerosols around the world Detection of sub visible cirrus and polar stratospheric clouds Indirect estimate of the radiative contribution of aerosols Technical Specifications 532 nm 2 orthogonal channels 1064 nm 1 channel Advantages of SpaceBased LIDAR Doesn t have to worry about low clouds getting in the way of observations of the upper troposphere Can survey more than one area Sample CALIPSO retrievals http wwwcalipso larc nasa gov products lidar browse images show ca lendar php Each page has approx 34 images on it Path of the satellite on the specified day Also has images of just daytime and just nighttime Polar stereographic projections Clickable pieces of the orbits We ll click on the blue section of the first picture We get 9 more images The blue section is now highlighted to remind us what we clicked Polar projections This orbit doesn t pass over the Arctic This orbit does pass over the Antarctic but that s not the part we clicked First main image 532 nm total backscatter Second image 532 nm perpendicular backscatte Third image 532 nm depolarization ratio Fourth image 1064 nm backscatter Fifth image Attenuated Color Ratio Sixth image Vertical Feature Mask So let s look at some interesting features We ll go through two of the four colors on this on Purple Strip Purple Strip Purple Strip Purple Strip Purple Strip Purple Strip Green Strip Green Strip Green Strip Green Strip Green Strip Green Strip ccasionally you ll get something that looks like th Notice the really interesting feature over the green red area Antarctica More fun stuf
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