Studying air pollution with kitt peak solar flux atlas — analysis method and results of observation

Abstract

For the measurement of atmospheric NO2 vertical column density (VCD), Kitt Peak Solar Flux Atlas can be substituted as an extraterrestrial solar radiation. Compared with differential analysis method, the Taylor expansion of integrated transfer equation underestimates the VCD. This underestimation is as large as 35% when the amount of NO2 is 1 × 1017 cm−2 and observation is conducted with an air mass factor of 10. Even when the VCD is 2 × 1016 cm−2 and the air mass factor is 4, the relative error of the retrieved VCD is still no less than 3%. If the observation is restricted under the small air mass factor condition (≤ 4), with Kitt Peak Solar spectrum as an extraterrestrial solar radiation, only an atmospheric layer of 2 km thick from ground can be studied, which will make the absorption too weak to be detected by normal instruments. The VCD in winter Tokyo area was observed and analyzed by differential method, which shows a good precision even when the absorption is as low as 3%. The largest average VCD was about 1.3 × 1017 cm-2, and the lowest was about 1.3 × 1016 cm−2. The trend of its variation was almost the same as the ground level observation by Saltzman reagent method.