Biomass burning is one of the main sources of aerosols and many trace gases. It has significant radiative effects and alters air quality locally, but also sometimes on a hemispheric scale. In addition to the total amount of pollutants emitted, their altitude is key in estimating their impact: the higher the injection height, the lower the local effect on air quality. However, higher wind speeds in the free troposphere may induce a longer-range transport of the fire plumes injected above the planetary boundary layer (PBL). In this work, we use the L2 CALIPSO observations of extinction and aerosol feature mask (VFM) in order to analyse the altitude of the observed biomass burning plumes. First, a statistical comparison of the altitudes observed by CALIPSO with plume heights derived from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) onboard the Terra satellite is presented. Therefore, we use a database of fire plumes digitized with the MISR INteractive eXplore (MINX) software from observations during years 2008 to 2011, 2017 and 2018. This allows to analyse, depending on the region and the characteristic of the fire, the information provided by the CALIOP data. The altitude of biomass combustion plumes is then analysed more generally using CALIOP day and night observations, both in the vicinity of observed fires (based on MODIS fire data) and during long-range transport, with a particular focus on the Northern Hemisphere. In addition to the VFM product, observations from the IASI/METOP instrument (carbon monoxide as an indicator of a combustion plume) and MODIS/AQUA AOD are used to identify dense fire plumes in the Northern Hemisphere. These complementary observations are also used to differentiate local plumes from plumes influenced by a potential inflow from another source region.