Technical note: Bimodal parameterizations of in situ ice cloud particle size distributions ...

• Main Authors: Bartolomé García, Irene, Sourdeval, Odran, Spang, Reinhold, Krämer, Martina
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Forschungzentrum Jülich 2024
• Subjects: 550; Arctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.34734/fzj-2024-01520; https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1022543

Atmospheric chemistry and physics 24(3), 1699 - 1716 (2024). doi:10.5194/acp-24-1699-2024 ... : The cloud particle size distribution (PSD) is a key parameter for the retrieval of microphysical and optical properties from remote-sensing instruments, which in turn are necessary for determining the radiative effect of clouds. Current representations of PSDs for ice clouds rely on parameterizations that were largely based on aircraft in situ measurements where the distribution of small ice crystals were uncertain. This makes current parameterizations deficient to simulate remote-sensing observations sensitive to small ice, such as from lidar and thermal infrared instruments. In this study we fit the in situ PSDs of ice crystals from the JULIA (JÜLich In situ Aircraft data set) database, which consists of 11 campaigns covering the tropics, midlatitudes and the Arctic, consistently processed and considered more robust in their measurements of small ice. For the fitting, we implement an established approach to PSD parameterizations, which consists of finding an adequate set of parameters for a modified gamma ...