The spatially and temporally coincident Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), CloudSat, and CALIPSO instruments observe vertically resolved profiles of key thermodynamic properties like temperature and water vapor (from AIRS), cloud/clear sky discrimination and cloud type and microphysical properties (from CloudSat and CALIPSO). Two avenues of research will be discussed. First, variance spectra of temperature and water vapor are derived and shown to have strong variations with height, latitude, season and surface type. A global climatology of spectral exponents is presented and compared to previous studies based primarily on aircraft in situ sampling, satellite radiances, and theoretical and numerical modeling results. A few implications for climate model parameterizations will be briefly mentioned. Second, cloudy and clear sky distributions of relative humidity with respect to ice (RHI) are derived from a combination of AIRS, CloudSat and CALIPSO. The cloudy and clear sky RHI is used in conjunction with AIRS distributions of temperature and water vapor variability within the context of an analytical method to quantify controls on the distributions of RHI. Variations in temperature and water vapor do not explain the presence of somewhat greater supersaturation frequency in the SH, which is suggestive of a link between anthropogenic aerosol and ice cloud processes, but also highlights some observational limitations in these data sets.