Ice particles in the atmosphere continue to contribute to the largest uncertainty in interpretations of the Earth’s changing energy budget, since the microphysical and radiative properties particularly of cirrus and and mixed-phase clouds are poorly understood (IPCC 2013). One important reason is the difficulty to measure the respective parameters on fast-flying, high altitude aircraft. Thus, this session aims to invite contributions from a series of airborne campaigns performed in the last years carrying a new generation of airborne cloud and aerosol instrumentation and spanning the region from the Arctic to the tropics. For example, two field studies took place at mid-latitudes: AIRTOSS on-board of a Learjet (Germany, 2013) and the HALO mission ML-CIRRUS (Europe, 2014); ACRIDICON-CHUVA on HALO occurred in the tropics (Brazil, 2014) and the RACEPAC campaign on POLAR 5 and 6 in the Arctic (Canada, 2014).

In addition, contributions from all aspects related to the research field of ice clouds and water vapor are highly welcome, as observational, laboratory, remote sensing and modelling studies. Topics of interest are formation, life cycle, microphysical and radiative properties, shapes, sizes, coverage and variability of ice particles including contrail cirrus in all regions of the atmosphere.

Invited talk:

"Observations of TTL water vapor and cirrus properties from the NASA Global Hawk during the Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment”

by Troy Thornberry, NOAA, Boulder, USA