International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Data - C2

Introduction

CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY PRODUCT

This CD-ROM contains the global monthly cloud products (ISCCP-C2), at 280 km spatial resolution. They are derived from monthly averages of data taken with three-hour resolution. The products include monthly averages of calibrated radiances, cloud detection results, and cloud and surface properties from radiative analysis. There are 72 variables contained within the data set. The data available at the time of publication begin in July 1983 and extend through December 1990. Software to read the data is also provided.

The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) is based at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. ISCCP is sponsored by the World Climate Research Programme for the purpose of ``collecting and analyzing satellite radiance measurements to infer the global distribution of cloud radiative properties and their diurnal and seasonal variations."

Access to data, documentation and software

Users are requested to acknowledge the appropriate reference paper, Olsen and Rossow, in any publication using ISCCP-C2 data. ISCCP data and software are publicly available.

The data are held on CD-ROM at the BADC and can be made available for browsing purposes. If you want to use the data in earnest you should order a copy of the CD from one of the contact addresses listed below.

The archive on disk is divided in three major directories:

The DATA directory contains the data.
The DOCUMENT directory contains the documentation.
The SOFTWARE directory contains the source code and a compiled version of the read software.

README files in each directory offer more information about their contents.

The data files (FILE006.DAT-FILE113.DAT) are written as one-byte binary integers as described in the Data Directory Documentation.

Additional data, related to ISCCP, may also be transferred directly from GISS using the anonymous FTP site.

Documentation

The documentation on the CD-ROM has been extracted and indexed and made available through this WWW interface. This gives an outline of the project and a description of the data set and processing.

Also from the ISCCP home page at GISS, general information about cloud climatology can be found.

Links and References

There are a number of sites on the World Wide Web which hold information about the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project Data.

The ISCCP homepage can be found at the Goddard Institute for Space studies or GISS.

The BADC also holds other ISCCP datasets (ISCCP D1 and D2 datasets) and provides general information about the ISCCP project.

The Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) also gives some additional information regarding the project and the C2 data set - note that the Goddard DAAC has regridded the ISCCPD datasets to 1deg by 1deg grid and a different file format is used).

In addition, the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) describes the ISCCP-C2 Monthly Cloud Products available on CD-ROM (using the keyword isccp-c2) and other related ISCCP data.

A list of references has been extracted from the CD-Rom.

Who to Contact

If you would like to obtain a copy of the CD-ROM you should contact the User Services Office at Langley DAAC.
If you wish to obtain access to other ISCCP data sets, you should contact Doug Ross at the Official ISCCP Archive (data on tape).
General queries about these pages or browsing the data should be directed to the BADC support line.

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