| A lidar (laser radar) was designed, built, calibrated, and used to obtain measurements of cirrus clouds. The challenges involved with designing and building such an instrument are discussed. Special attention is given to the calibration of the two polarization channels and a novel calibration method is presented. Measurements for three case studies representing quite different instances of cirrus cloud are provided. Radiosonde data give the background atmospheric conditions. Depolarization measurements are used to probe the microphysical structure. The data are also studied using wavelet analysis, which provides time-resolved power spectra that can be used to identify structures at various scales. These results demonstrate the power of the lidar system and its utility in studying cirrus microphysics and dynamics. |
