Cirrus Climatological Results from Lidar Measurements at OHP (44 °N, 6 °E)

Leah Goldfarb (1) , Philippe Keckhut (1) , Marie-Lise Chanin (1) , Alain Hauchecorne (1)

1 SA - Service d'aéronomie

A climatology of cirrus clouds over the Obser-vatoire de Haute Provence in France has been constructed from the analysis of ground-based lidar measurements taken from 1997 to 1999. During this period the high-resolution Rayleigh/Mie lidar collected 384 nights of measurements and cirrus profiles are observed in about half of these cases. We find subvisible cirrus (r < 0.03) constitute • 20 % of cirrus cloud occurrences and that the mean thickness of a subvisible cirrus cloud layer is less than i km. A discussion of the error associated with these determinations is also presented .

Domaines: Physique Atmosphérique et Océanique [physics.ao-ph]

Leah Goldfarb, Philippe Keckhut, Marie-Lise Chanin, Alain Hauchecorne. Cirrus Climatological Results from Lidar Measurements at OHP (44 °N, 6 °E). Geophysical Research Letters, 2001, 28 (9), pp.1687-1690. ⟨10.1029/2000GL012701⟩. ⟨hal-01633087⟩