The depolarization - attenuated backscatter relation: CALIPSO lidar measurements vs. theory. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Using measurements obtained by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite, relationships between layer-integrated depolarization ratio (delta) and layer-integrated attenuated backscatter (gamma) are established for moderately thick clouds of both ice and water. A new and simple form of the delta-gamma relation for spherical particles, developed from Monte Carlo simulations and suitable for both water clouds and spherical aerosol particles, is found to agree well with the observations. A high-backscatter, low-depolarization delta-gamma relationship observed for some ice clouds is shown to result primarily from horizontally oriented plates and implies a preferential lidar ratio - depolarization ratio relation in nature for ice cloud particles containing plates.

published proceedings

  • Opt Express

author list (cited authors)

  • Hu, Y., Vaughan, M., Liu, Z., Lin, B., Yang, P., Flittner, D., ... Winker, D.

citation count

  • 158

complete list of authors

  • Hu, Yongxiang||Vaughan, Mark||Liu, Zhaoyan||Lin, Bing||Yang, Ping||Flittner, David||Hunt, Bill||Kuehn, Ralph||Huang, Jiangping||Wu, Dong||Rodier, Sharon||Powell, Kathy||Trepte, Charles||Winker, David

publication date

  • April 2007