On the determination of the stratospheric aerosol microstructure from limb scatter measurements

Abstract

The inverse problem of the reconstruction of the microphysical parameters of stratospheric aerosol (integral areas of particles S and integral volumes V) from limb scatter spectra recorded by the SAGE III instrumentation with allowance for variations of all of the important atmospheric and surface parameters is considered. Errors in the reconstruction of S and V for different conditions of spaceborne experiments and different wavelengths are studied by numerical methods. It is shown that the errors of the reconstruction of S and V for altitudes of 12–45 km are 28–33 and 33–40%, respectively. The informativeness of the remote measurement method is 60–75% for S and 65–75% for V. The averaging of the a priori profiles of the aerosol microphysics over 5-km layers decreases the errors in the reconstruction of S by 10–13 and V by 15–20%.