Effects of horizontal orientation on the radiative properties of ice clouds

Transfer of radiation through cirrus consisting of non-sphericalice crystals randomly oriented in a plane (2D model) is solved by using the discrete-ordinates method. The model is employed to determine the radiative flux properties and the intensity distribution of cirrus for both solar and thermal infrared ra-diation. Comparison of the 2D cloud model with the conventional 3D cloud model, i.e., randomly oriented in a three- dimensional space, shows that the preferential orientation of ice crystals has a substantial effect on the cloud solar albedo. The difference in the cloud albedo computed from the two models can be as large as 8% for a cirrus of 2 km thickness. On the thermal infrared side, although the flux emission for cirrus is less affected by the orientation of ice crystals, the difference in the upward radiance using 2D and 3D models is also significant.