Polar Stratospheric Cloud Simulations for CRISTA-NF

This data set contains simulated infrared limb emission spectra in the presence of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) for the air-borne CRyogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere - New Frontiers (CRISTA-NF). The atmospheric background conditions for the simulations represent the Arctic winter 2009/2010, in which PSCs were measured during the RECONCILE campaign. While the PSCs of 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 km thickness are located between 13 and 30 km altitude, the spectra are available for altitudes between 10 km and the flight altitude of 18.4 km with 100 m vertical spacing. Two spectral ranges, from 785 to 840 cm-1 and 940 to 965 cm-1 are provided. The simulated PSC scenarios comprise pure ice, NAT, and STS scenarios, described by mono-modal log-normal particle size distributions, and two mixed scenarios STS/NAT and small NAT/large NAT, both described by bi-modal log-normal particle size distributions. For STS PSCs we followed the setup in Spang et al. (2012) and simulated three mixtures with wt% H2SO4/HNO of 2/48, 25/25, and 48/2 for five volume densities between 0.1 and 10 µm3/cm3 and four median radii between 0.1 and 1 µm with 0.3 µm in addition. For ice PSCs we extended the range to smaller volume densities, covering the range from 0.1 to 100 µm3/cm3 in 7 steps, and 6 median radii between 1 and 10 µm. Different to Spang et al. (2012) we derived the NAT particle size distribution from the HNO3 volume mixing ratio of 1 to 15 ppbv in 1 ppbv steps and median radii between 0.5 and 8 µm, where we added 6 and 8 µm and used a finer sampling of 0.5 µm between 0.5 and 4 µm. For the mixed STS/NAT scenario we combined STS with wt% H2SO4/HNO of 2/48, volume densities of 5 and 10 µm3/cm3, and median radii of 0.1, 0.3 ,1 µm with NAT volume mixing ratios of 5, 10, 15 ppbv, and median radii between 0.5 and 3.5 µm. For the bi-modal NAT simulation the data set contains simulations for 10 ppbv where the partitioning between the first and the second mode is 3/7, 5/5, and 7/3 ppbv. The median radii of the first mode were kept smaller (0.5 to 2.5 µm) than in the second mode (1 to 8 µm).