DYNAMICS of optical-microphysical properties of atmospheric haze at stepwise change of air humidity

Abstract

The three-day cycle of spectronephelometric measurements of the angular aerosol scattering coefficients of the near-ground aerosol at the stepwise increase/decrease of the relative air humidity of 50, 65, 75, 85, and 90% has been conducted in the Large Aerosol Chamber of IAO SB RAS filled with the atmospheric air. The results of solution of the inverse problem have shown that the condensation coarsening of particles at the simultaneous decrease of their refractive index and the imaginary part of the complex refraction index (absorption index) is stably observed with an increase of the relative air humidity for ultrafine (with radii of 30-100 nm) and fine (100-370 nm) particles. However, for the coarse particles (370-600 nm), the increase of humidity leads to the effect of increase of the refractive index from 1.60 to 1.66, while the values of the absorption index are low (∼10 -5 ) and vary only slightly at the aerosol humidification. The effective radius of particles (165-195 nm) and the single scattering albedo (0.71-0.83) increase synchronously with an increase of the air humidity. For two days of aerosol evolution in the closed volume of the chamber, the total extinction and absorption coefficients also vary synchronously with the variation of humidity, but at the third day the influence of humidity on the absorption coefficient was not observed. A possible reason for appearance of specific condensation peculiarities is the influence of humidity variations on the inflow/outflow of particles smaller than 30 nm and larger than 600 nm having various physical-chemical composition into the optically active size range.