Characteristics of supersaturation in mid-latitude cirrus clouds and their adjacent cloud-free air

Abstract. Water vapor measurements of mid-latitude cirrus clouds, obtained by the WALES (WAter vapor Lidar Experiment in Space) lidar system during the Mid-Latitude Cirrus (ML-Cirrus) airborne campaign, that took place in spring of 2014 over central Europe and the NE Atlantic Ocean, are combined with model temperatures from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and analysed. Our main focus is to derive the distribution and temporal evolution of humidity with respect to ice within cirrus clouds and in their adjacent cloud-free air. We find that 34.1 % of in-cloud data points are supersaturated with respect to ice. Supersaturation is also detected in 6.8 % of the cloud-free data points. When the probability density of the Relative Humidity over ice (RHi) is calculated with respect to temperature for the in-cloud data points from the ML-Cirrus data-set there are two peaks. One around 225 K and close to saturation, RHi = 100 % and a second one at colder temperatures around 215 K in subsaturation, RHi = 90 %. These two regions seem to represent two cirrus cloud categories: in-situ formed and liquid-origin. Regarding their vertical structure, most clouds have higher supersaturations close to the cloud-top and become subsaturated near the cloud bottom. Finally, we find that the vertical structure of RHi within the clouds is also indicative of their life stage. RHi skewness tends to go from positive to negative values as the cloud ages. RHi modes are close to saturation in young clouds, supersaturated in mature clouds and subsaturated in dissipating clouds.