Microphysical properties of mixed-phase & ice clouds retrieved from in situ airborne "Polar Nephelometer" measurements

In this paper we present microphysical properties of natural clouds retriev ed from an airborne "Polar Nephelometer" measurements. The retrieval was do ne by means of an iterative inversion method, which is based on the bi-comp onent (water droplets and ice crystals) representation of ice and mixed pha se cloud composition. The present study shows that experimental scattering phase functions of ice crystals are characterized by high information conte nt with respect to the aspect ratio of ice crystals which can be estimated in addition to their effective size distributions.