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The cirrus clouds of the upper troposphere are globally widespread and are important regulators of the radiative balance, and hence climate, of the Earth‐atmosphere system. Despite their wide distribution, however, cirrus are difficult to study from satellite radiance measurements or from scattered ground observing sites because they can occur as part of multilayered cloud systems and are characteristically optically thin. The need to better characterize the global distribution of cirrus clouds was therefore a major justification for the formation flying of the CloudSat and CALIPSO satellites, which support a cloud radar and polarization lidar, respectively. Measurements by these active remote sensors, when analyzed by appropriate algorithms, have the ability to identify and accurately measure the locations and heights of this category of clouds. The combined CloudSat/Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder …