Properties of high-altitude tropical cirrus clouds determined from ACE FTS observations

Abstract

During tropical observations made in February and August of 2004, the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) FTIR instrument aboard the Canadian SciSat-1 satellite recorded several extinction spectra in the range of 700-4400 cm-1 that exhibit strong signatures of cirrus clouds. We have analyzed these spectra in order to quantify the properties of these high-altitude cirrus clouds. This Letter reports the vertical profiles of the average ice density in the clouds and the particle size distributions. We also discuss the effect of particle shape on the retrieval results. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.