Effect of Cavities on the Optical Properties of Bullet Rosettes: Implications for Active and Passive Remote Sensing of Ice Cloud Properties

Abstract

AbstractBullet rosette particles are common in ice clouds, and the bullets may often be hollow. Here the single-scattering properties of randomly oriented hollow bullet rosette ice particles are investigated. A bullet, which is an individual branch of a rosette, is defined as a hexagonal column attached to a hexagonal pyramidal tip. For this study, a hollow structure is included at the end of the columnar part of each bullet branch and the shape of the hollow structure is defined as a hexagonal pyramid. A hollow bullet rosette may have between 2 and 12 branches. An improved geometric optics method is used to solve for the scattering of light in the particle. The primary optical effect of incorporating a hollow end in each of the bullets is to decrease the magnitude of backscattering. In terms of the angular distribution of scattered energy, the hollow bullets increase the scattering phase function values within the forward scattering angle region from 1° to 20° but decrease the phase function values at side- and backscattering angles of 60°–180°. As a result, the presence of hollow bullets tends to increase the asymmetry factor. In addition to the scattering phase function, the other elements of the phase matrix are also discussed. The backscattering depolarization ratios for hollow and solid bullet rosettes are found to be very different. This may have an implication for active remote sensing of ice clouds, such as from polarimetric lidar measurements. In a comparison of solid and hollow bullet rosettes, the effect of the differences on the retrieval of both the ice cloud effective particle size and optical thickness is also discussed. It is found that the presence of hollow bullet rosettes acts to decrease the inferred effective particle size and to increase the optical thickness in comparison with the use of solid bullet rosettes.