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Abstract
The uses and limitations of the twilight method of detecting aerosol layers are discussed and an experimental modification capable of checking the reliability of the results is described. The data from several sequences of measurements are shown to give average distributions of stratospheric aerosols in good agreement with those determined by direct sampling.
The stratification revealed by the experiments is very variable. Simultaneous observations at different latitudes show that the aerosol distributions often have the same form over distances of 300 km, but that the degree of similarity decreases rapidly with increasing separations. There are preferred heights for layers showing intense scattering, which on the average, slope upwards towards the equator. Some features show a surprisingly high degree of persistence in time and some curious changes in apparent height.