Polarization of clouds

This paper reports the main results concerning polarization by clouds derived from POLDER (polarization and directionality of earth's reflectances) airborne version. These results tend to confirm the high information content in the polarization (phase, altimetry). The preliminary results of EUCREX'94 (European Cloud Radiation Experiment) evidenced the drastically different polarized signatures for ice crystals and water droplets. Here we report systematic and statistically significative observations over the whole EUCREX data set. The results show that the cirrus exhibit their own signature. Preliminary observations performed during CLEOPATRA'91 (Cloud Experiment Ober Pfaffenhofen And Transport) and EUCREX'94 campaigns have shown the feasibility of cloud altimetry using spectral information (443 nm and 865 nm) of the polarized light over liquid water droplets clouds. Altimetry technique has been generalized on ASTEX-SOFIA'92 and EUCREX'94 data sets. All these results are presented and discussed in this paper.