Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics On the linkage between tropospheric and Polar Stratospheric clouds in the Arctic as observed by space–borne lidar

Abstract. The type of Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) as well as their temporal and spatial extent are important for the occurrence of heterogeneous reactions in the polar stratosphere. The formation of PSCs depends strongly on temperature. However, the mechanisms of the formation of solid PSCs ar...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: P. Achtert, M. Karlsson Andersson, F. Khosrawi, J. Gumbel
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.423.1690
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/3791/2012/acp-12-3791-2012.pdf
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Summary:Abstract. The type of Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) as well as their temporal and spatial extent are important for the occurrence of heterogeneous reactions in the polar stratosphere. The formation of PSCs depends strongly on temperature. However, the mechanisms of the formation of solid PSCs are still poorly understood. Recent satellite studies of Antarctic PSCs have shown that their formation can be associated with deep-tropospheric clouds which have the ability to cool the lower stratosphere radiatively and/or adiabatically. In the present study, lidar measurements aboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite were used to investigate whether the formation of Arctic PSCs can be associated with deeptropospheric clouds as well. Deep-tropospheric cloud systems have a vertical extent of more than 6.5 km with a cloud