Lidar and radar derived cirrus microphysical properties for the 26 November 1991 case study

摘要

The Wave Propagation Laboratory's CO2 lidar (lambda = 10.6 microns) and Ka-band radar (lambda = 8.66 mm) operate at widely separated wavelengths; the differences in how the transmitted waves interact with cloud targets can be exploited to provide information that neither sensor could provide alone. This can be as simple as overlapping the data sets to provide additional coverage on cloud geometry (see Uttal and Intrieri, 1993) or combining the measurements in a theoretical framework to provide cirrus cloud parameters of the size spectrum, i.e., characteristic particle size and number concentration. In this paper, the latter option is described and an example case study presented to illustrate the types of information available for cloud and radiation transfer models.