1. Ben Kravitz November 5, 2009 CALIPSO

2. What is CALIPSO? CALIPSO is (among a couple of other things) a space- based LIDAR Launched in 2005 Flies on the A-train

3. 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 What CALIPSO does

4. 532 nm: 2 orthogonal channels 1064 nm: 1 channel Technical Specifications

5. Doesn’t have to worry about low clouds getting in the way of observations of the upper troposphere Can survey more than one area Advantages of Space- Based LIDAR

6. Sample CALIPSO retrievals Text http://www- calipso.larc.nasa.gov/products/lida r/browse_images/show_calendar. php

7. 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

8. Polar stereographic projections

9. Clickable pieces of the orbits We’ll click on the blue section of the first picture

10. We get 9 more images The blue section is now highlighted (to remind us what we clicked)

11. 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

12. First main image: 532 nm total backscatter

13. Second image: 532 nm perpendicular backscatter

14. Third image: 532 nm depolarization ratio

15. Fourth image: 1064 nm backscatter

16. Fifth image: Attenuated Color Ratio

17. Sixth image: Vertical Feature Mask

18. So let’s look at some interesting features

19. We’ll go through two of the (four) colors on this one

20. Purple Strip

26. Green Strip

32. Occasionally you’ll get something that looks like this

33. Notice the really interesting feature over the green/red area (Antarctica)

40. More fun stuff