First Ice-Cloud effective particle size parameterization based on combined lidar and radar data

A newly developed procedure for estimating ice cloud effective particle size using combined lidar and radar signals has been applied to several months of data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program s Southern Great Plains site. Though considerable scatter is present in the retrieval results, on average, the data show a clear dependence of effective particle size on both temperature and ice water content. The data are used to construct a parameterization based on a bimodal ice particle size-distribution whose characteristics depend both on temperature and ice water content.