Mario Blas Lavorato¹, Boris Barja², Juan Carlos Antuña²

¹División Radar Láser - CEILAP (CITEFA-CONICET) - Argentina
²Camagüey Lidar Station, Meteorological Center of Camagüey. INSMET. Cuba

Cirrus clouds studies are currently of particular interest due to their role in the radiative balance of the atmosphere. It is necessary and relevant to identify their structure and behavior in different regions of the world as a contribution to climate models. Satellite measurements provide valuable information about their global coverage. But, there is lack of information about the vertical distribution of cirrus optical and geometrical properties. Lidar measurements provide that information to determine the profiles of such properties in cirrus clouds. Those quantitative determinations require properly determined backscatter to extinction ratio coefficients. In this work we analyze and intercompare different methods used to obtain the cirrus clouds parameters (optical depth, extinction and backscattering coefficients). We conduct a critical analysis of the results, determining those parameters using the conventional approach, double ended and Back-TOD partially methods; all based on Klett method. The goal of this work is to determine the backscatter to extinction ratio for our regions. We analyze and compare the results with old and recent data.