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Centre for Atmospheric Science

EMERALD Project - CPI Data - Whole Flight

CPI data from the whole flight clickable lidar plot

Overall, at least in terms of number concentration this flight (as were most others in this project) was dominated by small irregular and 'spheroidal' crystals. These habit classifications are done by the software automatically, so within the irregulars it is possible to identify different types of crystal by eye. Of the small 'spheroidal' crystals, it is thought that these were entirely ice, no evidence was found for supercooled liquid water. A closer look at the data shows that cirrus clouds are not at all homogenius, with different regions of the cloud having very different habit distributions, which are dependant on the dynamical and thermal properties of that region of the cloud.