Reproducing the optical properties of fine desert dust aerosols using ensembles of simple model particles

Abstract

Single scattering optical properties are calculated for a proxy of fine dust aerosols at a wavelength of 0.55 μm . Spherical and spheroidal model particles are employed to fit the aerosol optical properties and to retrieve information about the physical parameters characterising the aerosols. It is found that spherical particles are capable of reproducing the scalar optical properties and the forward peak of the phase function of the dust aerosols. The effective size parameter of the aerosol ensemble is retrieved with high accuracy by using spherical model particles. Significant improvements are achieved by using spheroidal model particles. The aerosol phase function and the other diagonal elements of the Stokes scattering matrix can be fitted with high accuracy, whereas the off-diagonal elements are poorly reproduced. More elongated prolate and more flattened oblate spheroids contribute disproportionately strongly to the optimised shape distribution of the model particles and appear to be particularly useful for achieving a good fit of the scattering matrix. However, the clear discrepancies between the shape distribution of the aerosols and the shape distribution of the spheroidal model particles suggest that the possibilities of extracting shape information from optical observations are rather limited.