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Retrieving aerosol optical properties from moments of the particle size distribution
Author(s) -
Yue G. K.,
Lu J.,
Mohnen V. A.,
Wang P.H.,
Saxena V. K.,
Anderson J.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/97gl00522
Subject(s) - aerosol , stratosphere , extinction (optical mineralogy) , particle size , particle size distribution , troposphere , moment (physics) , particle (ecology) , statistical physics , computational physics , physics , atmospheric sciences , optics , meteorology , chemistry , classical mechanics , geology , oceanography
The randomized minimization search technique (RMST) is a powerful tool for retrieving aerosol size distribution from a set of aerosol extinction measurements. This technique is now extended to retrieve aerosol optical properties from a known moment sequence. The new usage of the RMST is demonstrated by using particle size distributions obtained from fits to in situ measurements conducted in the troposphere and stratosphere. Good agreements (with differences less than 5%) between some aerosol optical properties calculated from the moments and those calculated directly from the particle size distributions are obtained. Our results illustrate that the RMST can be applied to parameterize particle optical properties from the lower‐order moments of an aerosol size distribution.