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The effects of ice crystals on the backscatter polarization in lidar returns have been measured. Scattering from ground-level snow of varying density, high-altitude cirrus clouds and ice pellet shower clouds has been studied using a linearly polarized ruby laser system with multiple receiver channels. The space and time dependence of the total intensity and the linear depolarization ratio δ of the lidar return have been investigated. It has been found that considerable variations occur in snow with δ varying between 0.2 and 0.8. In cirrus and ice pellet shower clouds δ is typically found to lie in the range 0.3 ± 0.1. The factors involved in the use of polarization data for ice-water discrimination in the atmosphere are presented and discussed.
Pal et al. (Sat,) studied this question.