Highly supercooled cirrus cloud water: confirmation and climatic implications.

Liquid cloud droplets supercooled to temperatures approaching -40 degrees C have been detected at the base of a cirrostratus cloud through a combination of ground-based, polarization laser radar (lidar) and in situ aircraft measurements, Solar and thermal infrared radiative budget calculations based on these observatoins indicate that significant changes in the atmospheric heating distribution and the surface radiative budget may be attributed to liquid layers in cirrus clouds.

Polarized light scattering by hexagonal ice crystals: theory.

A scattering model involving complete polarization information for arbitrarily oriented hexagonal columns and plates is developed on the basis of the ray tracing principle which includes contributions from geometric reflection and refraction and Fraunhofer diffraction. We present a traceable and analytic procedure for computation of the scattered electric field and the associated path length for rays undergoing external reflection, two refractions, and internal reflections. We also derive an analytic expression for the scattering electric field in the limit of Fraunhofer diffraction due to an oblique hexagonal aperture.

Electromagnetic scattering by arbitrarily oriented ice cylinders.

The scattering of electromagnetic waves by arbitrarily oriented, infinitely long circular cylinders is solved by following the procedures outlined by van de Hulst. The far-field intensities for two cases of a linearly polarized incident wave are derived. The scattering coefficients involve the Bessel functions of the first kind, the Hankel functions of the second kind, and their first derivatives.