Polarized laser backscattering of atmospheric clouds distribution

This paper presented a method of using backscatter vertical cross-section and depolarization ratio to analyze the backscatter data of polarization LIDAR of cloud aerosol lidar and infrared pathfinder satellite observations (CALIPSO) satellite. Taking the CALIPSO data on Nov. 23rd and 24th, 2008 for example, it studied the distribution of the cloud in atmosphere in the visible and infrared light in Beijing area. Backscatter vertical profiles and depolarization ratio were drawn by interactive data language (IDL). The vertical distribution directly described the distribution of each component in the atmosphere such as aerosols, low cloud and cirrus, and showed the height of atmospheric boundary layer. The depolarization ratio gave the height and thickness of cloud. Two observations showed that there existed clouds with the thickness of 2 km~2.5 km and the depolarization ratio of 0.2 at the altitude of 3 km~7 km, and the method could distinguish between cloud and aerosol and provide spatial distribution of them more conveniently.