Distinguishing cirrus cloud presence in autonomous lidar measurements

Campbell, J. R.; Vaughan, M. A.; Oo, M.; Holz, R. E.; Lewis, J. R.; Welton, E. J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-435-2015

Articles | Volume 8, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-435-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-435-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 1

Research article

|

27 Jan 2015

Research article |

| 27 Jan 2015

Distinguishing cirrus cloud presence in autonomous lidar measurements

J. R. Campbell, M. A. Vaughan, M. Oo, R. E. Holz, J. R. Lewis, and E. J. Welton

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Final revised paper (published on 27 Jan 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jul 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C2179: 'Review', P. Seifert, 14 Aug 2014
RC C2539: 'Review of "Distinguishing cirrus cloud presence in autonomous lidar measurements" by Cambell et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Sep 2014
AC C2987: 'Response to Reviewers', James Campbell, 02 Oct 2014

Short summary

Digital thresholds based on 2012 CALIOP satellite lidar measurements are investigated for distinguishing cirrus cloud presence, including cloud top temperatures and heights combined with layer depolarization and phase and optical depths. A cloud top temperature of -37 C is found to exhibit the most stable performance, owing to it being the point of homogeneous liquid-water freezing. Depolarization and phase help but are mostly ambiguous at warmer temperatures where mixed-phase clouds propagate.