https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611916012
Subtropical and Polar Cirrus Clouds Characterized by Ground-Based Lidars and CALIPSO/CALIOP Observations
1 Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA), Atmospheric Research and Instrumentation Branch, Torrejón de Ardoz, 28850 - Madrid, Spain
2 Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares (IPEN), Center for Lasers and Applications, São Paulo, Brazil
3 Instituto Antártico Argentino/Dirección Nacional del Antártico (IAA/DNA), Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Email: cordobajc@inta.es
Published online: 7 June 2016
Cirrus clouds are product of weather processes, and then their occurrence and macrophysical/optical properties can vary significantly over different regions of the world. Lidars can provide height-resolved measurements with a relatively good both vertical and temporal resolutions, making them the most suitable instrumentation for high-cloud observations. The aim of this work is to show the potential of lidar observations on Cirrus clouds detection in combination with a recently proposed methodology to retrieve the Cirrus clouds macrophysical and optical features. In this sense, a few case studies of cirrus clouds observed at both subtropical and polar latitudes are examined and compared to CALIPSO/CALIOP observations. Lidar measurements are carried out in two stations: the Metropolitan city of Sao Paulo (MSP, Brazil, 23.3°S 46.4°W), located at subtropical latitudes, and the Belgrano II base (BEL, Argentina, 78ºS 35ºW) in the Antarctic continent. Optical (COD-cloud optical depth and LR-Lidar Ratio) and macrophysical (top/base heights and thickness) properties of both the subtropical and polar cirrus clouds are reported. In general, subtropical Cirrus clouds present lower LR values and are found at higher altitudes than those detected at polar latitudes. In general, Cirrus clouds are detected at similar altitudes by CALIOP. However, a poor agreement is achieved in the LR retrieved between ground-based lidars and space-borne CALIOP measurements, likely due to the use of a fixed (or low-variable) LR value in CALIOP inversion procedures.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2016
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
