Modeling optical properties of mineral dust over the Indian Desert

The direct radiative forcing (DRF) of dust particles is most uncertain among all the major aerosol species because of the large regional variation in their shapes and composition. The Indian Desert is known to be a source of natural mineral dust of nonspherical shapes. Particle shape and exact mineralogical information are essential for modeling dust optical properties as the latter governs their refractive indices. The realistic dust shapes, namely, sphere, spheroid, Chebyshev, and cylinder, based on Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images, have been used to model the mineral dust optics of the Indian Desert using the T‐matrix method. The particle radius from 0.1 to 5.0 μ m has been considered at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet to near infrared (0.38–1.2 μm). Using Bruggman's effective medium mixing rule, the refractive index of composite dust particle has been calculated, accounting for both nonmetallic and metallic component (as hematite). Our calculations show that increasing the hematite percentage from 0% to 10% results in reduction of 0.477 and 0.013 in single scattering albedo (SSA) for cylindrical particle of radius 1 μ m at 0.38 and 1.02 μ m wavelengths, respectively, while the same for volume equivalent spherical particle were 0.484 and 0.022, respectively. The scattering signature of sharp‐edged cylindrical particle showed the largest deviation to sphere compared with that of other relatively smooth particles (spheroid and Chebyshev). Changes in dust optical properties because of nonsphericity and varying hematite percentage were estimated for two cases: background dust and dust storm at visible wavelength. The change in SSA between the above two cases was insignificant for particles of radii <0.4 μ m for each hematite percentage considered. On the other hand, for particles of size range 0.4–1 μ m, the change in SSA increases with increasing hematite percentage. A 6% increase in hematite leads to an SSA reduction of more than 0.2 for particle radius of 1 μ m for both background dust and dust storm cases. Optical properties of polydisperse dust distribution at visible wavelength suggest the likely hematite percentage as 0%–4% in the Indian mineral desert dust. The effect of hematite variation on SSA is found to be stronger than particle nonsphericity. The present work will lead to a better estimation of the radiative forcing imposed by dusts as well as their satellite retrieval over the Indian Desert region.