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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Balloon-borne lidar observations of tropical cirrus clouds and comparison with CALIOP

Thomas Lesigne
François Ravetta
Vincent Mariage
Jacques Pelon

Résumé

Key component of the climate system, tropical cirrus clouds modulate both the Earth’s radiative budget and the amount of water vapor transported to the stratosphere. The range of optical depth of such clouds pans several orders of magnitude, from thick opaque cirrus detrained from deep convection to ultra thin ones just below the stratosphere. Although sub-visible cirrus clouds have been largely documented from CALIOP space-borne lidar, its detection lower limit is an obstacle to accurately quantify the tropical cirrus coverage. The microlidar BeCOOL (Balloon-borne Cirrus and convective overshOOT Lidar) has been designed to tackle this issue. Between October 2021 and January 2022, in the framework of Strateole-2 project, three BeCOOL microlidars have been flown onboard super-pressure balloons in the lower tropical stratosphere (~20 km). Case studies of collocated observations with CALIOP, along with statistical comparisons, highlight the very good agreement between the two lidars and the enhanced sensitivity of BeCOOL to ultra thin clouds. This higher sensitivity is achieved thanks to the low speed of the balloons and the small distance to the observed clouds, which allow to integrate the observations over a longer time. BeCOOL’s observations reveal the structure and the significant coverage of optically ultra thin clouds undetected from space.

Domaines

Météorologie
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Dates et versions

insu-04599641 , version 1 (03-06-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : insu-04599641 , version 1

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Thomas Lesigne, François Ravetta, Aurélien Podglajen, Vincent Mariage, Jacques Pelon. Balloon-borne lidar observations of tropical cirrus clouds and comparison with CALIOP. CALIPSO International Symposium on Spaceborne Lidar, Jun 2024, Saint Malo, France. ⟨insu-04599641⟩
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