Preliminary Assessment of the CALIPSO Lidar System

This work describes the on-orbit performance and preliminary calibration assessment of the elastic backscatter lidar flying aboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite. The CALIPSO lidar measures range-resolved backscatter intensity from the Earth's atmosphere using two 532 nm channels, having polarization orientations both parallel and perpendicular to the linearly polarized laser, and a single 1064 nm channel. Different calibration strategies are employed for each channel, hence the validation of each channel requires a somewhat different approach.