A critical issue to calculate the image transmission through cirrus clouds is to obtain a detailed description of the angular
distribution of the scattered radiation in the forward direction. Computation of the scattering phase function on the basis
of microphysics description of the cloud thanks to ray-tracing codes, seems to be the best way to fulfill this requirement.
However, a comprehensive microphysical model can not be found, because of the great variability of the ice crystals
composing natural cirrus. An optimization process has been developed to find the best mixing ratio of four pristine ice
crystals shapes that minimizes the error on the forward peak of the scattering phase function. To achieve this goal, a
comparison with a reference phase function derived from MODIS database has been led. The bulk scattering properties
of the seven size distributions defined in this database have been computed at four wavelengths in the spectral domain
from visible to medium infrared, applying the mixing ratio obtained after an optimization at 0.55μm. Used as an input to
a propagation model based on a Monte Carlo method, PSF have been computed. They show very good agreement with
the PSF calculated with the corresponding reference scattering properties.
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