Comparison of airborne in-situ, airborne radar-lidar, and spaceborne radar-lidar retrievals of polar ice cloud properties sampled during the POLARCAT campaign
Résumé
This study illustrates the high potential of RALI, the French airborne radar-lidar instrument, for studying cloud processes and evaluating satellite products when we have satellite overpasses. We demonstrate, for an Arctic Nimbostratus ice cloud collected on 1 April 2008 during the POLARCAT campaign, the capability of this synergistic instrument to retrieve cloud properties and to characterize the cloud phase at scales smaller than a kilometer which is crucial for cloud process analysis. A variational approach, which combines radar and lidar, is used to retrieve IWC, extinction and effective radius. We show that the combination of radar and lidar provides better retrievals than stand-alone retrievals, and that in general the radar overestimates and the lidar underestimates IWC. As the sampled ice cloud was simultaneously observed by CloudSat and CALIPSO satellites, we show a new way to assess satellite cloud products by combining in-situ and active remote sensing measurements. It was then possible to compare RALI to three satellite ice cloud products: CloudSat, CALIPSO and DARDAR.
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