Retrieval of effective complex refractive index from intensive measurements of characteristics of ambient aerosols in the boundary layer

Abstract

Aerosol complex refractive index (ACRI) has attracted intensive attentions due to its significance in modeling aerosol radiative effects. Determinations of ACRI from surface measurements of aerosol scattering and absorption coefficients as well as number size distributions during June, 2008 based on an iterative Mie algorithm were performed. The aim of our study was to introduce an inversion approach with the merits of high time-resolutions to retrieve the optically effective ACRI, especially its imaginary part. Based on simultaneous measurements of aerosol characteristics, mean ACRI value of 1.50 ( ± 0.34)-i0.025 ( ± 0.015) at 550 nm in Hefei in summer was deducted. The lower imaginary parts with higher single scattering albedos and lower scattering Angstrom exponents were obtained for haze periods compared with nonhaze conditions with similar air-mass back-trajectories, indicating more large and scattering particles contributing to the formation of haze episodes. The derived imaginary parts of ACRI related to agricultural biomass burning were in the range from 0.013 to 0.029 at 550 nm. Significant negative correlations between retrieved imaginary parts of ACRI and measured single scattering albedos indicate that our retrieval approach is a reasonable method for determining the imaginary parts of complex refractive indices of aerosol particles.