The datasets consist of 11 climatologies based on measurements from 5 different sensors types:
- Multi-spectral imagers : ISCCP, PATMOS-x, AVHRR-Cloudcci, AVHRR-CLARA (> 1980s)
- Advanced multi-spectral imagers : MODIS-CE, MODIS-CLDPROP (VIIRS continuity) (> 2000s)
- IR sounders : AIRS-CIRS, IASI-CIRS (> 2003)
- Multi-angle solar sepctral-imager : MISR (> 2000)
- Active lidar : CALIPSO-ST, CALIPSO-GOCCP (> 2006)
CALIPSO-ST provides TopLayer, Passive (COD > 0,3), OPAQUE (COD > 3), Column, IIR (CEM, COD, CRE, CWP)
The database covers the same variables as the original GEWEX cloud assessment database.
In addition to averages over grid boxes of 1° latitude x 1° longitude, the database also contains monthly histograms of cloud properties given at their retrieval spatial resolution. Exceptions are the MODIS-CE and ISCCP histograms, containing values which have been first averaged over 0.2° (CERES sensor footprint) and 1° (ISCCP map grid resolution), respectively. Only the 2-dimensional COD-CP and CEM-CP histograms of ISCCP were constructed from the initial 10 km pixels.
The data are organized as 1 file per variable, per year, per observation time.
Data access :
- One can download the data via anonymous ftp:
ftp ftp.climserv.ipsl.polytechnique.fr
cd gewexca/update_v2 - or use this thredds adress :
https://thredds-x.ipsl.fr/thredds/catalog/GEWEX_CA/catalog.html
using wget command (wget -P “$DESTINATION_PATH” -e robots=off -nH –cut-dirs 4 -nc -r -l5 -A “_””2007″”.nc” -R ‘catalog*’ -I /thredds/fileServer/,/thredds/catalog/ “https://thredds-x.ipsl.fr/thredds/catalog/GEWEX_CA/AIRS-CIRSv2/2007/catalog.html”)