Polarization lidars with conical scanning for retrieving the microphysical characteristics of cirrus clouds

The paper presents the first results of observations of cirrus clouds by polarization lidars with conical scanning, which were developed in Hefei (China) and in Tomsk (Russia). The light scattering matrix of ice crystal particles of cirrus clouds has been calculated for the first by the authors within the framework of the physical optics approximations in the case of conical scanning lidar. It is found that in this case the Mueller matrix consists of ten non-zero elements, four of which are small and can't be applied to interpret the azimuthal distribution of particle orientation. All the diagonal elements have a strong azimuthal dependence. Among the off-diagonal elements only one element M-34 carries additional information for interpreting the azimuthal distribution.