Mean characteristics of lidar signals from broken clouds.

The problem of the backscattered laser radiation field formation is solved based on the theory of optical radiation transfer in broken cloudiness as a scattering medium with random geometry. The dependence of the energy characteristics of a lidar return averaged over the ensemble of cloud-field realizations on the type of clouds (cumulus and stratus), cloud fraction, optogeometrical parameters of a cloud field, lidar's geometric parameters, and the distance to a cloudy layer. It has been shown that over long periods the multiple light scattering between the cumulus clouds is the dominating contribution to the lidar signal power.