Accurate Absolute Measurements of Liquid Water Content (LWC) and Ice Water Content (IWC) of Clouds and Precipitation with Spectrometric Water Raman Lidar

A detailed description is given of how the liquid water content (LWC) and the ice water content (IWC) can be determined accurately and absolutely from the measured water Raman spectra of clouds. All instrumental and spectroscopic parameters that affect the accuracy of the water-content measurement are discussed and quantified, specifically, these are the effective absolute differential Raman backscattering cross section of water vapor (π)/dΩ, and the molecular Raman backscattering efficiencies ηliq and ηice of liquid and frozen microparticles, respectively. The latter two are determined following rigorous theoretical approaches combined with RAMSES measurements. For ηice, this includes a new experimental method which assumes continuity of the number of water molecules across the vertical extent of the melting layer. Examples of water-content measurements are presented, including supercooled liquid-water clouds and melting layers. Error sources are discussed, one effect that stands out is interfering fluorescence by aerosols. Aerosol effects and calibration issues are the main reasons why spectral Raman measurements are required for quantitative measurements of LWC and IWC. The presented study lays the foundation for cloud microphysical investigations, and for the evaluation of cloud models or the cloud data products of other instruments. As a first application, IWC retrieval methods are evaluated that are based on either lidar extinction or radar reflectivity measurements. While the lidar-based retrievals show unsatisfactory agreement with the RAMSES IWC measurements, the radar-based IWC retrieval which is used in the Cloudnet project performs reasonably well. On average, retrieved IWC agrees within 20% to 30% (dry bias) with measured IWC.