August 1, 2014

Products

Parasol provides the following set of products

Parasol products

Level-1 and Level-2 products are daylight orbit passes whereas Level-3 products are global scale, monthly syntheses (averages and statistics).

The atmosphere products provides a synthesis of aerosol and cloud products, both on a daily basis and as monthly statistics.

Up to level 1, the processing is made by CNES. Products are distributed by CNES through the Parasol-Polder distribution center.

The scientific processing in the field of Aerosols/Clouds/Radiation & Water Vapour is done by ICARE Data Management & Distribution Center.

The scientific processing in the field of Land Surfaces is done by the POSTEL thematic center.

Parasol products have been calibrated by CNES (level 1) and validated (level 2 & 3) by the algorithm team.

Parasol level 1 processing is performed by CNES within 1 day of data acquisition.
ICARE processes routinely aerosol products within 2 days of acquisition; cloud products within 10 to 20 days because they require surface syntheses as input.

The catalog starts on 4 March 2005.

Parasol capitalizes on Polder heritage. Still, major improvements have been achieved with respect to Polder second generation of algorithms, such as the retrieval aerosol fine fraction over land or the refinement of cloud phase (a reprocessing of Polder-1 and Polder-2 data sets consistent with Parasol was done by the end of 2007).

Parasol Products