Investigation of cirrus clouds using the calipso lidar data

Cirrus clouds normally exist in the upper troposphere and sometimes extend into the stratosphere. Unlike low altitude clouds that have a cooling effect on solar radiation through scattering, cirrus clouds scatter only a small amount of solar radiation and prevent a large quantity of long-wave radiation from leaving the earth-atmosphere system. Cirrus clouds are globally distributed and are composed almost exclusively of non-spherical ice crystals. Tropopause cirrus tends to occur over regions of intense convective activity like equatorial Africa and South America, which are sites for vigorous continental convection, and the western Pacific, which is a site of significant oceanic convection. Few instruments can deduce the global presence of cirrus clouds. The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite mission provides comprehensive observations of cloud vertical structure on a near-global scale.