The occurrence of clouds and the manner in which cloud layers organize in the vertical have a first order influence on the energy balance of the earth. The combined datasets provided by cloudsat and calipso provide the first global observations that span the entire range of clouds from subvisible cirrus in the tropical tropopause transition layer to the deep precipitating cloud systems. We will explore the combined cloudsat and calipso data sets from the first year of observations and demonstrate the manner in which cloud layers co-occur in the global atmosphere. We will also examine the implications of this co-occurrence to the radiative balance of the earth using cloud property retrievals and radiative transfer calculations validated with TOA radiant flux measurements.