Spectral signatures of polar stratospheric clouds and sulfate aerosol
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
- Lockheed Palo Alto Research Lab., CA (United States)
- California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (United States)
- Univ. of Reading (United Kingdom)
Multiwavelength observations of Antarctic and midlatitude aerosol by the Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer (CLAES) experiment on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite are used to demonstrate a technique that identifies the location of polar stratospheric clouds. The technique discussed uses the normalized area of the triangle formed by the aerosol extinctions at 925, 1257, and 1605 cm{sup {minus}1} (10.8, 8.0, and 6.2 {mu}m) to derive a spectral aerosol measure M of the aerosol spectrum. Mie calculations for spherical particles and T-matrix calculations for spheroidal particles are used to generate theoretical spectral extinction curves for sulfate and polar stratospheric cloud particles. The values of the spectral aerosol measure M for the sulfate and polar stratospheric cloud particles are shown to be different. Aerosol extinction data, corresponding to temperatures between 180 and 220 K at a pressure of 46 hPa (near 21-km altitude) for 18 August 1992, are used to demonstrate the technique. Thermodynamic calculations, based upon frost-point calculation and laboratory phase-equilibrium studies of nitric acid trihydrate, are used to predict the location of nitric acid trihydrate cloud particles. 47 refs., 22 figs., 3 tabs.
- OSTI ID:
- 41696
- Journal Information:
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 51, Issue 20; Other Information: PBD: 15 Oct 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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