A study of the absorption and extinction properties of hexagonal ice columns and plates in random and preferred orientation, using exact T-matrix theory and aircraft observations of cirrus

Abstract

Absorption and extinction properties of the finite hexagonal ice column and hexagonal ice plate in random and preferred orientation are studied at the wavelength of 80 μm using a new implementation of exact T-matrix theory. For the case of random orientation at size parameters around two, it is shown that the hexagonal ice column and hexagonal ice plate absorption resonances are diminished relative to Mie theory, and the same behaviour is also noted for an aggregate particle consisting of eight hexagonal elements. The absorption properties of the aggregate particle have been calculated using the finite-difference time-domain method. It is also shown that extinction and absorption solutions for the hexagonal ice column and hexagonal ice plate can differ significantly if incidence occurs perpendicular or parallel to the cylindrical axis of the hexagon. For the case of perpendicular incidence on the edge of the hexagon, absorption solutions can exceed those of Mie theory, and for the case of parallel incidence, behaviour of the extinction solutions for hexagonal ice columns and hexagonal ice plates is shown to be similar to previously published work based on the prolate and oblate spheroid. Interference structure, associated with surface waves, is resolved on the hexagonal column extinction solution and the hexagonal plate absorption solution, thereby demonstrating that surface waves can exist on a non-axisymmetric geometry. The usefulness of assuming the hexagonal ice column in retrieval of ice crystal effective size is also investigated using aircraft based radiometric observations of semi-transparent cirrus at the wavelengths of 8.5 and 11 μm .