Analysis of Dust Aerosol by Using Dual-Wavelength Lidar

Abstract

Simulation of dust aerosol optical property is rather difficult, due to its extremely irregular shape, which often brings about difficulties in transforming its physical properties (such as size distribution) into optical properties (such as scattering phase function) in remote sensing retrieval and atmospheric radiation model. Some recent researches reveal that homogeneous spheroids seem to be an applicable optical model when dust particles are not much bigger than the wavelength, spheroids with reasonable shape distribution can simulate the scattering phase function of dust particles quite well. Based on the existed dual-wavelength lidar inversion algorithms, a modified method is proposed in the paper. Assuming the size distributions of dust aerosol can be modeled by bimodal lognormal distributions dominated by particles ranged in coarse mode, the size distributions and lidar ratios of dust aerosol at two wavelengths can be derived from dual-wavelength lidar measurement. By applying this algorithm to the data of dual-wavelength lidar at Semi-Arid Climate and Environment Observatory of Lanzhou University (SACOL), preliminary results show that for the case of pure dust the retrieved size distribution agree with that observed by Aerodynamic Particle Sizer Spectrometer, and the derived mean lidar ratios are 45.7 ± 5.3 sr at 532 nm and 33.9 ± 1.5 sr at 1064 nm. © Taiwan Association for Aerosol Research.