Determination of the droplet effective size and optical depth of cloudy media from polarimetric measurements: theory.

We present the development of a semi-analytical algorithm for optical particle sizing in disperse media. The algorithm is applied to the specific case of water clouds. However, it can be extended with minor modifications to other types of light-scattering medium. It is assumed that the optical thickness tau of the medium is large and the probability of photon absorption beta is small. Thus the optical particle-sizing problem is studied in the regime of highly developed multiple light scattering. It was found that the degree of polarization in visible and near-infrared channels provides us with information both on the effective size of droplets and on the optical thickness tau.