3/18/08 04:15 pm - R04 of 2B-TAU released to the general science community

Release 4 of 2B-TAU (cloud optical depth) is now available to the General Science Community via the data ordering system.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

11/28/07 12:00 am - CALIPSO Pitch Maneuver - impact on CloudSat

CALIPSO is planning to execute a pitch maneuver today to point 3 degrees in the forward direction. Tomorrow, CloudSat will move to a new formation position that is approximately 5 seconds forward from it's current position in order to continue to sample the same atmospheric volume as CALIPSO. This will put Cloudsat between 15 and 20 seconds in front of CALIPSO. Due to the modified view angle of CALIPSO, the combined product(2B-GEOPROF-Lidar) will have to be re-validated prior to release to the science community. The updated product is expected to be released to the CloudSat Science Team by March/April 2008 and to the general science community by May 2008. Check back for updates on those release dates.

11/5/07 09:00 am - R04 of 2B-FLXHR released to the general science community

Release 4 of 2B-FLXHR (Fluxes and Heating Rates) is now available to the General Science Community via the data ordering system.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

10/22/07 12:00 am - R04 of 2B-CWC-RO released to General Science Community

Release 4 of 2B-CWC-RO (cloud water content - liquid and ice) is now available to the General Science Community via the data ordering system.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

9/17/07 04:37 pm - R04 of ECMWF-AUX, MODIS-AUX, & 2B-CLDCLASS released to General Science Community

Release 4 of ECMWF-AUX, MODIS-AUX, and 2B-CLDCLASS is now available to the General Science Community via the data ordering system.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

8/10/07 09:19 am - R04 Released to General Science Community

Release 4 of 1B-CPR, 2B-GEOPROF, and 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR is now available to the General Science Community via the data ordering system. This release incorporates several improvements for the data products primarily driven by the development of a surface clutter reduction scheme in 1B-CPR. This affects all products by improving cloud detection near the Earth's surface. In addition, the profile overlap at the beginning and end of each granule has been removed. Granules now start with the first profile on or after the equator on a descending pass and end with the last profile before the equator on the next descending pass. Release 4 also includes the first release of the 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR product.



This annoucement to the General Science Community applies to the 1B-CPR, 2B-GEOPROF, and 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR products only. The new release of MODIS-AUX, ECMWF-AUX, and 2B-CLDCLASS is still only available to the CloudSat Science Team.



All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

8/1/07 10:05 am - R04 2B-CLDCLASS Released to Science Team

Release 4 of the 2B-CLDCLASS product was released to the Science Team today.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC

7/19/07 08:45 am - R04 available to the Science Team

Release 4 is now available to the CloudSat Science Team via the data ordering system. This release incorporates several improvements for the data products primarily driven by the development of a surface clutter reduction scheme in 1B-CPR. This affects all products by improving cloud detection near the Earth's surface. In addition, the profile overlap at the beginning and end of each granule has been removed. Granules now start with the first profile on or after the equator on a descending pass and end with the last profile before the equator on the next descending pass. Release 4 also includes the first release of the 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR product.

This annoucement applies to the 1B-CPR, MODIS-AUX, ECMWF-AUX, 2B-GEOPROF, and 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR products.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page, on-line product specifications, and the summary of changes. If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

6/29/07 09:38 am - Rain floods Central Texas

On June 26, 2007, CloudSat flew on the western side of the system that is causing flooding in Central Texas and Southern Oklahoma. See the CloudSat Quicklook and more information here! (Note: Clicking this link will take you outside the CloudSat DPC website.)

6/23/07 10:33 am - New Product Description Documents

A new quality statement is available for 2B-GEOPROF and a new ICD is available for 2B-GEOPROF-LIDAR.

5/22/07 12:00 am - Publication Reference Submission Link Available

Are you publishing a paper or giving a presentation that includes CloudSat data or results gained from CloudSat data? If you are, let us know! You can now submit a publication reference here.

4/27/07 12:00 am - CloudSat Celebrates One Year Above Earth

CloudSat will celebrate it's first anniversary Saturday after hvaing launched on April 28, 2006. For the entire story, click here.

3/21/07 02:29 pm - Spacecraft in safe mode 17 - 21 March

The spacecraft entered safe mode at 2214 UTC on Saturday, 17 March 2007 due to a commanding error. Normal operation resumed at 1429 UTC on Wednesday, 21 March.

1/26/07 03:58 pm - Public release of remaining CloudSat standard data products

The CloudSat Data Processing Center (DPC) has released a Beta version of the final 3 Standard Data Products. These data are now available to the general science community.

It is important for all users to note that these products, as well as all of the CloudSat Standard products in release 03 (identified in the filename as "_R03_" ) are provisional products that are still undergoing validation by the CloudSat Science Team. These products will be superseded by Release 04 on/about July of 2007 and will, at that time, address known issues and other findings from the results of ongoing validation efforts during the remainder of our first year of data collection. In particular, the CWC, TAU, and FLXHR products are only released at this time for the period of 10/15-11/15 of 2006 to allow the science community to become familiar with them and to do their own quantitative assessment of these initial CloudSat products.

All data users are asked to review the known issues page of the Data Processing Center website and become familiar with these issues before using the results in publications or presentations. In addition, please report any additional anomalies or questions to the DPC via email or the contact page.

Other resources:
Online product specifications
Configuration control information
Data ordering system

1/23/07 01:38 pm - 2B-GEOPROF quality statement now available

All users of release R03 2B-GEOPROF files should download and read the 2B-GEOPROF quality statement. The statement and all future product issues are also available from the Data Issues page.

12/22/06 06:48 pm - 2B-CWC-RO released to the Science Team

The 2B-CWC-RO product is now being generated for release to the Science Team. After a brief review period it will be released to the general science community.

Be sure to check the production status page before searching for files of interest on the data ordering system.

12/15/06 04:48 pm - 2B-LWC and 2B-IWC being merged into 2B-CWC

The 2B-LWC (liquid water content) and 2B-IWC (ice water content) products will be merged into one 2B-CWC (cloud water content) product for both RO and RVOD schemes. The new products will have the same information that the original products had, with added fields that partition ice and water inside the clouds based on temperature.

The process of creating the 2B-CWC products has pushed the estimated time of release back one week.

Summary:
2B-LWC-RO and 2B-IWC-RO become 2B-CWC-RO.
2B-LWC-RVOD and 2B-IWC-RVOD become 2B-CWC-RVOD.

12/13/06 09:57 am - Updates to the quicklook page

Several updates to the quicklook page have been made that make it more informative and easier to use.

Information has been added to each granule that indicates if there are missing profiles, the transmitter was not operating, or if a calibration maneuver was performed. These conditions are flagged with a colored box. Clicking on the box will pop-up a window with more details.

The page navigation pull-down menu now includes the granule number and date/time for the first granule on each page, making it much easier to jump directly to a page containing a granule you might be interested in.

Finally, the quicklook page has been optimized so it should load much faster than it did in the past.

11/29/06 09:08 am - FTP server back up

The CIRA firewall has been upgraded and the CloudSat FTP server is back online. Preliminary tests show an improvement in FTP transfer rates.

11/28/06 09:19 pm - FTP server down until Wednesday morning

Data access through the CloudSat FTP server is down until early Wednesday morning as the CIRA firewall is upgraded. The change should help improve FTP download speeds. The FTP server became unavailable around 2 pm MST on Tuesday the 28th.

11/17/06 10:30 am - R03 release of 1B-CPR, 2B-GEOPROF and 2B-CLDCLASS

The CloudSat DPC has completed the reprocessing of 1B-CPR, 2B-GEOPROF, and 2B-CLDCLASS products for the first five months of the mission. These data are released to the Science Community.

NOTE to Science Team members who have been pulling older version data for their preliminary assessments: This reprocessing includes changes to the output fields of all of these products, so be sure to replace any older versions of these products with the current version that is available through the data ordering system.

The "process description documents" for these products are still being updated, so be sure to use the on-line specifications, which are all current. See the on-line product specifications pages and the summary of changes.

To access the released data, use the DPC data ordering system interface.

If you have any questions concerning the ordering process, contact the DPC.

10/16/06 04:07 pm - R03 processing will begin after the science team meeting

R03 processing was originally supposed to be completed by 9 October, but a error was discovered in the Satellite_altitude field causing the incorrect calculation of bin heights in the Level 2 products. This problem does not affect the R02 files. R03 corrects the geolocation data for the off-nadir periods (pre-7 July and post 15 August). Processing will begin after the science team meeting the week of 16-20 October.

10/3/06 12:00 pm - CloudSat radar operating again

The radar has been reactivated. A data gap exists from 9/26/06 00:30 UTC through 10/03/2006 14:10 UTC. The CPR was not operating during this period.

9/28/06 12:00 pm - CloudSat spacecraft in safe mode

On 26 September, the CloudSat spacecraft entered a safe mode known as Sun Acquire. In sun acquire mode, the spacecraft and the radar are safe but the radar is not operating. The spacecraft was successfully returned to Earth-Pointing mode today, and we are taking steps to return the radar to Operating mode, which we anticipate will occur on 3 October.

6/2/06 12:00 pm - CloudSat radar powered on

The CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar was turned on at approximately 14:44 UTC. CloudSat is operating nominally and returning an amazing view of the vertical structure of a myriad of cloud systems - a view that is now possible, for the first time, on a global scale.

4/28/06 12:00 pm - Successful launch of CloudSat and CALIPSO

CloudSat and CALIPSO were launched at 4:02 MDT on 28 April 2006.

4/25/06 12:00 pm - CloudSat launch rescheduled for 28 April

The launch of CloudSat and CALIPSO has been rescheduled for 28 April 2006.