On restriction of integral aerosol distributions in inverse problems of solar photometry

Abstract

Two methods for estimating the total particle geometric cross section from spectral measurements of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) are considered. These results are intended to additionally define the solar photometry inverse problems with the use of integral distributions when the aerosol particle dispersion composition is described. The first method is based on the use of a determined functional interrelation between the sought geometric cross section and its a priori preset upper boundary. The second method employs information on the spectral behavior of the mean extinction efficiency factor on a set of aerosol microphysical models. We numerically studied how the boundaries of the distributions influence the retrieval accuracy of aerosol microstructure parameters in AOD inversion.