Arctic winter high spectral resolution cloud height retrievals

The Arctic winter is a challenging environment to retrieve cloud heights from passive satellite measurements. The Arctic winter is dark and has persistent temperature inversions extending well above the surface with surface temperatures often more then 20 degrees colder then the atmosphere above. In this environment traditional infrared cloud top height retrievals will not provide a unique cloud height if the cloud top temperature is warmer then minimum temperature in the inversion and not equal to the inversion maximum. This poster will present a new technique applied to high spectral infrared measurements to determine a unique cloud height for these cloud conditions. The new method will be compared to ground and aircraft lidar cloud top measurements.