All-sky polarization imaging of cloud thermodynamic phase

Stokes parameter (related to the difference between perpendicular and parallel linear polarization in the scattering plane) can be used to detect cloud thermodynamic phase when observed with a ground-based passive polarimeter. In this paper, we describe the use of our all-sky imaging polarimeter to experimentally test this proposed method of detecting cloud thermodynamic phase in the entire sky dome. The zenith cloud phase was validated with a dual-polarization lidar instrument.