First determination of the fractal perimeter dimension of noctilucent clouds/polar mesospheric clouds (Invited)

Details First determination of the fractal perimeter dimension of noctilucent clouds/polar mesospheric clouds (Invited) First determination of the fractal perimeter dimension of noctilucent clouds/polar mesospheric clouds (Invited)

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsa14a..02v&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SA14A-02

Physics

[0305] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Aerosols And Particles, [3332] Atmospheric Processes / Mesospheric Dynamics, [3360] Atmospheric Processes / Remote Sensing

Scientific paper

We report on the first determination of the fractal perimeter dimension of noctilucent clouds / polar mesospheric clouds obtained using satellite images of cloud fields taken with the CIPS (Cloud Imaging and Particle Size experiment) on NASA's AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) spacecraft. The area and perimeter of individual clouds exceeding a certain albedo threshold are used to infer the fractal perimeter dimension. We find a scaling behavior of cloud area versus cloud perimeter of over 3 orders of magnitude in terms of cloud perimeter, indicating that the cloud perimeters are fractal. The derived fractal perimeter dimension depends weakly on the assumed albedo threshold and has a value of around 1.34. This numerical value is in remarkably good agreement with the fractal perimeter dimension of tropospheric clouds and rain fields, suggesting that similar physical processes govern the distribution and shape of both tropospheric and noctilucent clouds. It appears plausible that turbulent mixing processes are responsible for the fractal perimeter dimension of noctilucent clouds.

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