Polarization lidar returns from aerosols and thin clouds: a framework for the analysis.

Relationships for the interpretation of polarization lidar observations of aerosols and thin clouds are presented. They allow for the separation of contributions to backscatter from solid and liquid phases by the use of either the classical backscatter and depolarization ratio parameters or the particulate cross-polarized backscatter cross sections. It is shown that different aerosol phases can be better separated by use of the latter coordinates. Emphasis is placed on the study of composition and phase properties of polar stratospheric aerosols.

[1]  C. Platt.  TRANSMISSION AND REFLECTIVITY OF ICE CLOUDS BY ACTIVE PROBING , 1981 .

[2]  Kenneth Sassen,et al.  Depolarization of Laser Light Backscattered by Artificial Clouds , 1974 .

[3]  G. S. Kent,et al.  Dual‐polarization airborne lidar observations of polar stratospheric cloud evolution , 1990 .

[4]  Gian Paolo Gobbi,et al.  Physical properties of stratospheric clouds during the Antarctic winter of 1995 , 1998 .

[5]  R. Turco,et al.  Stratospheric aerosols: Observation and theory , 1982 .

[6]  G. Gobbi.  Lidar estimation of stratospheric aerosol properties: Surface, volume, and extinction to backscatter ratio , 1995 .

[7]  Hajime Okamoto,et al.  Modeling of backscattering by non-spherical ice particles for the interpretation of cloud radar signals at 94 GHz. An error analysis , 1995 .

[8]  M. Zahniser,et al.  Metastable Phases in Polar Stratospheric Aerosols , 1995, Science.

[9]  Joseph J. Barrett,et al.  High-Resolution Raman Spectroscopy of Gases with cw-Laser Excitation* , 1967 .

[10]  O. Toon,et al.  The presence of metastable HNO3/H2O solid phases in the stratosphere inferred from ER 2 data , 1996 .

[11]  K. Sassen.  Optical backscattering from near-spherical water, ice, and mixed phase drops. , 1977, Applied optics.

[12]  K. Sassen,et al.  Scattering of Polarized Laser Light by Water Droplet, Mixed-Phase and Ice Crystal Clouds. Part II: Angular Depolarizing and Multiple-Scattering Behavior. , 1979 .

[13]  N. S. Higdon,et al.  Airborne lidar observations in the wintertime Arctic stratosphere: Polar stratospheric clouds , 1990 .

[14]  M. Mishchenko,et al.  Light scattering by polydispersions of randomly oriented spheroids with sizes comparable to wavelengths of observation. , 1994, Applied optics.