G. Di Donfrancesco¹, J. P. Pommereau², C. Buontempo³, F. Cairo³, M. Viterbini³, A. Adriani⁴, A. Garnier², R. Morbidini³ and N. A. Bui Van⁵

¹Enea Clim. Roma Italy
²CNRS, Paris France
³ISAC-CNR Roma, Italy
⁴IFSI-CNR Roma, Italy
⁵IPMET-UNESP Bauru Brazil

A balloon borne microLIDAR has been developed to study tropical cirrus clouds. This extremely light instrument has been tested during two different flights in Europe and in Brazil. Results of these test flights, shown hereafter, indicate the great capability of such low cost light instrumental package, to detect sub-visible clouds. Final goal of the experiment is to develop an high technological version of this instrument to be used onboard of long duration balloons at the tropics in the framework of HIBISCUS international campaign.