Preliminary airborne lidar results in the Canadian Arctic during FIRE III

Abstract

Simultaneous upward/downward airborne lidar profiles were recently obtained in the ('anadian Arctic during the First ISCCI International Satellite Cloud Climatology Progject) Regional Experiment ill (FIRE Ill). tue lidar was mounted onboard the National Research Council of Canada's (NRCC) Convair 8() (CV80). Additional instrumentation aboard the ('VS8() included several particle sizing and imaging probes. liquid water content (LWC) probes. a sensitive meteorological package and a chemistry package to measure particle speciation and hulk aerosol and gas phase properties. Within the four week period 18 flights were accomplished including 4 flights over the Surface i-leat Budget of' tile Arctic (SI 1E13A) ice camp. A depolarization channel was added to both the upward and downward lidar to help distinguish pai'ticle phase and sphericitv. Preliminary lidar results from various ice crystal layers. arctic haze layers, and boundary layer growth over open water will illustrate the uniqueness of this dataset. The lidar was also able to detect open leads and refrozen leads by examining the "ground-return of both the polarized and depolarized channels.