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Product Documentation
The product documentation pages contain information about the fields associated with each data product. To find out more about each product, click one of the links above or visit the Process Description Documents archive. On the product page you can click on any of the fields to get a description.
Organization of fields and attributes in the HDF-EOS files
The HDF-EOS files are organized into heirarchical groups. The file contains a swath, which for the CloudSat mission, has the same name as the product. The swath contains three groups: geolocation, data, and swath metadata. The fields listed on the following pages are organized into the geolocation and data groups. If there are any product-specific metadata fields then a swath metadata group will be shown as well.
The attributes shown for each field are also stored in the swath metadata group. They are stored in the format [field name].[attribute name]. For example, Radar_reflectivity.factor contains the scale factor for the 2B-GEOPROF radar reflectivity field.
The possible field attributes are:
| [fieldname].factor | scale factor (4-byte floating-point) |
| [fieldname].offset | offset (4-byte floating-point) |
| [fieldname].units | units (character string) |
| [fieldname].long_name | field description (character string) |
| [fieldname].valid_range | valid range (two element array [min,max] same type as the field) |
| [fieldname].missing | missing data value (same type as the field) |
| [fieldname].missop | indicates that missing data are <, <=, ==, >=, or > the missing value (character string) |
Although most fields use 1 and 0 as the scale factor and offset, some fields are scaled to fit into a smaller type when written to the file. For example, Radar_reflectivity is a 4-byte floating-point number, but is multiplied by 100 and converted to a 2-byte integer when it is written to the file. The scaling equation is:
| DATA_FILE_VALUE = (SCIENCE_VALUE * FACTOR) + OFFSET |
| - or - |
| SCIENCE_VALUE = (DATA_FILE_VALUE - OFFSET) / FACTOR |
The swath attributes section also contains (all character strings):
| ID_SITE | (CIRA) |
| ID_CENTER | (CloudSat DPC) |
| ID_URL | (http://cloudsat.cira.colostate.edu) |
| ID_MACHINE | machine that created the file |
| ID_ACCOUNT | account that created the file |
| ID_CREATED | date and time the file was created |
| algorithm_version | algorithm version number |
| product_version | product version number |
| start_time | YYYYMMDDHHmmss of the first profile in the file |
| end_time | YYYYMMDDHHmmss of the last profile in the file |
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