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We show that thin cirrus clouds, whose particle radius is greater than 50 μm and number concentration is less than 10 /L, extinct supercooled water clouds (SC) by use of the data of the space-borne lidar, Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), and the space-borne 94-GHz cloud profiling radar (CPR). We call the cirrus Large-and-Sparse-particle Clouds (LSC). The space-borne imagers, such as Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), cannot measure LSC; hence, LSC had been difficult to be found by satellites. CALIOP is less sensitive to LSC than CPR though CALIOP is usually more sensitive to clouds than CPR because of the cloud particle size distribution of LSC.The most significant feature of LSC is that LSC extinct SC and cloud particles of SC are changed into pristine ice particles. This is because (1) SC and LSC do not tend to coexist while horizontally oriented ice particle clouds (2D) and LSC tend to coexist, (2) the cloud top height of LSC is higher than that of SC, and (3) the terminal velocity of LSC particles is about 1 km/h.Because 10-20% of clouds in the Arctic are LSC, LSC would indirectly impact on radiative forcing in the Arctics.

Variation in stratospheric water vapor is controlled mainly by the dehydration process in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) over the western Pacific; however, this process is poorly understood. To address this shortcoming, in this study the match method is applied to quantify the dehydration process in the TTL over the western Pacific. The match pairs are sought from the Soundings of Ozone and Water in the Equatorial Region (SOWER) campaign network observations using isentropic trajectories. For the pairs identified, extensive screening procedures are performed to verify the representativeness of the air parcel and the validity of the isentropic treatment, and to check for possible water injection by deep convection, consistency between the sonde data and analysis field, and conservation of the ozone content. Among the pairs that passed the screening test, we found some cases corresponding to the first quantitative value of dehydration associated with horizontal advection in the TTL. The statistical features of dehydration for the air parcels advected in the lower TTL are derived from the match pairs. Match analysis indicates that ice nucleation starts before the relative humidity with respect to ice (RHice) reaches 207 ± 81% (1σ) and that the air mass is dehydrated until RHice reaches 83 ± 30% (1σ). The efficiency of dehydration is estimated as the relaxation time required for the relative humidity of the supersaturated air parcel to approach the saturation state. This is empirically estimated from the match pairs as the quantity that reproduces the second water vapor observation, given the first observed water vapor amount and the history of the saturation mixing ratio of the match air mass exposed during the advection. The relaxation time is found to range from 2 to 3 h, which is consistent with previous studies.

A meteorological balloon-borne cloud sensor called the Cloud Particle Sensor (CPS) has been developed. The CPS is equipped with a diode laser at ~ 790 nm and two photo detectors, with a polarization plate in front of one of the detectors, to count the number of particles per second and to obtain the cloud phase information (i.e. liquid, ice, or mixed). The lower detection limit for particle size was evaluated in laboratory experiments as ~ 2 μm diameter for water droplets. For the current model the output voltage often saturates for water droplets with diameter equal to or greater than ~ 80 μm. The upper limit of the directly measured particle number concentration is ~ 2 cm−3 (2 × 103L−1), which is determined by the volume of the detection area of the instrument. In a cloud layer with a number concentration higher than this value, particle signal overlap and multiple scattering of light occur within the detection area, resulting in a counting loss, though a partial correction may be possible using the particle signal width data. The CPS is currently interfaced with either a Meisei RS-06G radiosonde or a Meisei RS-11G radiosonde that measures vertical profiles of temperature, relative humidity, height, pressure, and horizontal winds. Twenty-five test flights have been made between 2012 and 2015 at midlatitude and tropical sites. In this paper, results from four flights are discussed in detail. A simultaneous flight of two CPSs with different instrumental configurations confirmed the robustness of the technique. At a midlatitude site, a profile containing, from low to high altitude, water clouds, mixed phase clouds, and ice clouds was successfully obtained. In the tropics, vertically thick cloud layers in the middle to upper troposphere and vertically thin cirrus layers in the upper troposphere were successfully detected in two separate flights. The data quality is much better at night, dusk and dawn than during the daytime because strong sunlight affects the measurements of scattered light.

An optical particle counter (OPC) is used in conjunction with lidar measurements to examine the characteristics of the particle size distribution in cirrus cloud in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) over Thailand where the TTL is defined as the height at which temperature is lower than −75°C in this paper. Of 11 OPC launches, cirrus cloud was detected at 10–15 km high on 7 occasions, cirrus was detected in the TTL in 6 cases, and simultaneous OPC and lidar measurements were made on two occasions. Comparison of lidar and OPC measurements reveal that the cloud heights of cirrus in the TTL varies by several hundred meters over distances of tens kilometers; hence the height is not always horizontally uniform. The mode radii of particles constituting the clouds are estimated by lidar and OPC measurements to be less than approximately 10 μm. The regression lines of the particle size distribution with and without cirrus cloud exhibit similar features at equivalent radii of