Arturo Peña¹, Juan C. Antuña², Leonardo Fernández¹, Boris Barja², Roberto Naranjo¹, Rene Estevan² and Orlando Rodríguez¹

¹Technical Development Lab, Camagüey Meteorological Center, Camagüey 70100, Cuba
²Camagüey Lidar Station, Camagüey Meteorological Center, Camagüey 70100, Cuba

It is well known that cirrus clouds play a relevant role in the global radiative balance. But there are still many unanswered questions about cirrus physical features, in particular about tropical cirrus. An experimental setup is planned to conduct simultaneous lidar and radar measurements of cirrus clouds using the lidar station and the radar located at the Camaguey Meteorological Center. The Maket-1 lidar operates at the 532 nm wavelength under the photon counting mode with a power of 300 mJ. The MRL-5 X-band radar operates at 10 Ghz (3 cm wavelength), with 160 Kw of peak power and a minimum detectable signal level of –27dbZ at 10 Km of height. Although the measurements of cirrus clouds using radar have been conducted mainly with millimeter wavelength (about 95 Ghz) the sensitivity of the system to be installed makes it suitable to guarantee the success of the experiments. This work will be conducted by the joint effort of the Technical Development Lab and the Camaguey Lidar Station teams. The first team has been conducting successfully the modernization and full automatization of the Cuban Radar Network. Both teams are conducting the modernization of lidar acquisition, control and processing system. A synchronization interface will be build to operate both instruments simultaneously and to collect and storage the data.

The joint system will allow the study of the vertical clouds profiles, including cloud-base and cloud-top will, layer thickness as well as multilayer structure. This system will provide unique information in the tropical region. It will permit to conduct future experimental campaigns with other instruments in situ or/and onboard research aircrafts and satellite as well as intercomparisons and calibrations.