Abstract
Multiwavelength observations of Antarctic and midlatitude aerosol by the Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer (CLAES) experiment on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite are used to demonstrate a technique that identifies the location of polar stratospheric clouds. The technique discussed uses the normalized area of the triangle formed by the aerosol extinctions at 925, 1257, and 1605 cm−1 (10.8, 8.0, and 6.2 μm) to derive a spectral aerosol measure M of the aerosol spectrum. Mie calculations for spherical particles and T-matrix calculations for spheroidal particles are used to generate theoretical spectral extinction curves for sulfate and polar stratospheric cloud particles. The values of the spectral aerosol measure M for the sulfate and polar stratospheric cloud particles are shown to be different. Aerosol extinction data, corresponding to temperatures between 180 and 220 K at a pressure of 46 hPa (near 21-km altitude) for 18 August 1992, are used to demonstrate the technique. Thermodynamic calculations, based upon frost-point calculations and laboratory phase-equilibrium studies of nitric acid trihydrate, are used to predict the location of nitric acid trihydrate cloud particles.
*Current affiliation: Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
†The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
