Evaluation and utilization of CloudSat and CALIPSO data to analyze the impact of dust aerosol on the microphysical properties of cirrus over the Tibetan Plateau

The present study elucidates on the evaluation of two versions (V3 and V4.10) of vertical feature mask (VFM) and aerosol sub-types data derived from the Cloud-Aerosol LiDAR and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO), and its utilization to analyze the impact of dust aerosol on the microphysical properties of cirrus over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). In conjunction to the CALIPSO, we have also used the CloudSat data to study the same during the summer season for the years 2007–2010 over the study area 25–40°N and 75–100°E. Compared to V3 of CALIPSO, V4.10 was found to have undergone substantial changes in the code, algorithm, and data products. Intercomparison of both versions of data products in the selected grid between 30–31°N and 83–84°E within the study area during 2007–2017 revealed that the VFM and aerosol sub-types are in good agreement of ～95.27% and ～82.80%, respectively. Dusty cirrus is defined as the clouds mixed with dust aerosols or existing in dust aerosol conditions, while the pure cirrus is that in a dust-free environment. The obtained results illustrated that the various microphysical properties of cirrus, namely ice water content (IWC), ice water path (IWP), ice distribution width (IDW), ice effective radius (IER), and ice number concentration (INC) noticed a decrease of 17%, 18%, 4%, 19%, and 10%, respectively due to the existence of dust aerosol, consistent with the classical “Twomey effect” for liquid clouds. Moreover, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) showed moderate negative correlations between ?0.4 and ?0.6 with the microphysical characteristics of cirrus. As our future studies, in addition to the present work undertaken, we planned to gain knowledge and interested to explore the impact of a variety of aerosols apart from the dust aerosol on the microphysical properties of cirrus in different regions of China.