Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics www.atmos-chem-phys.net 1680-7316 1680-7324 8 23 2008 10.5194/acp-8-6965-2008 http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/6965/2008/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/6965/2008/acp-8-6965-2008.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/6965/2008/acp-8-6965-2008.pdf 6965 6977 2008-12-03 Comparison of cloud statistics from spaceborne lidar systems S. Berthier P. Chazette J. Pelon B. Baum Service d'Aéronomie du CNRS, Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, 4, Place Jussieu–75252 Paris Cedex 05, France Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Laboratoire mixte CEA-CNRS, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France Space Science and Engineering Center, 122 W Dayton Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA now at: Space Science and Engineering Center, 1225 W. Dayton Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA The distribution of clouds in a vertical column is assessed on the global scale through analysis of lidar measurements obtained from three spaceborne lidar systems: LITE (Lidar In-space Technology Experiment, NASA), GLAS (Geoscience Laser Altimeter System, NASA), and CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol LIdar with Orthogonal Polarization). Cloud top height (CTH) is obtained from the LITE profiles based on a simple algorithm that accounts for multilayer cloud structures. The resulting CTH results are compared to those obtained by the operational algorithms of the GLAS and CALIOP instruments. Based on our method, spaceborne lidar data are analyzed to establish statistics on the cloud top height. The resulting columnar results are used to investigate the inter-annual variability in the lidar cloud top heights. Statistical analyses are performed for a range of CTH (high, middle, low) and latitudes (polar, middle latitude and tropical). 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