Aerosol backscatter coefficient data were examined from two flights near Japan and Hawaii undertaken during NASA's Global Backscatter Experiment (GLOBE) in May--June 1990. During each of these two flights the aircraft traversed different altitudes within a region of the atmosphere defined by the same set of latitude and longitude coordinates. This provided an ideal opportunity to allow flight level focused continuous wave (CW) lidar backscatter measured at 9.11-μm wavelength and modeled aerosol backscatter from two aerosol optical counters to be compared with pulsed lidar aerosol backscatter data at 1.06- and 9.25-μm wavelengths. The best agreement between all sensors was found in the altitude region below 7 km, where backscatter values were moderately high at all three wavelengths. Above this altitude the pulsed lidar backscatter data at 1.06- and 9.25-μm wavelengths were higher than the flight level data obtained from the CW lidar or derived from the optical counters, suggesting sample volume effects were responsible for this. Aerosol microphysics analysis of data near Japan revealed a strong sea-salt aerosol plume extending upward from the marine boundary layer. On the basis of sample volume differences, it was found that large particles were of different composition compared with the small particles for low backscatter conditions. ¿ 1998 American Geophysical Union