<title>Stratospheric background aerosols and polar stratospheric clouds observed with satellite sensors: inference of particle composition and sulfate amount</title>

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The Improved Limb Atmospheric Spectrometer (ILAS) on board the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) successfully observed atmospheric profiles over the Arctic and Antarctic from November 1996 through June 1997. It revealed the frequent occurrence of Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs) over the Arctic between January and mid-March 1997. The ILAS provides a unique data set, including aerosol extinction at 780 nm, nitric acid, water vapor, and nitrous oxide, simultaneously. This paper demonstrates the validity of the ILAS aerosol data and presents an approach to estimate the chemical composition of PSCs. Comparisons are made with data from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) II.