Air Pollution, Aerosols and Clouds in the Climate System

NASA in collaboration with CNES, BALL, IPSL and Hampton University launched state-of-art dual channel space LIDAR on April 28, 2006. Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) is flying in constellation of satellites called A-Train along with Aura, PARASOL, CloudSat, Aqua, taking Earth observations within 7-8 minutes and OCO will soon join them to complete the A-Train. CALIPSO took its first observation (image on right) on July 24, 2006 and last December its level 1 radiance, lidar level 2 vertical feature masks, cloud and aerosol layer products are released to the public. These data sets are unique in various ways and will provide new dimension (vertical) to the aerosol research. CALIPSO provides long awaited global vertical profiles of aerosols in the atmosphere, which will be very useful for air quality, earth radiation budget and climate change studies. An example is shown below: Read More About Image Here This graphic shows a flight comparison betw...