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A Comparison of Aerosol Optical Properties from the Cimel Sunphotometer and the Whole Sky Imager

Ricchiazzi, P. and Gautier, C., University of California, Santa Barbara
Eleventh Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting

The Cimel sun photometer (CSPOT) is currently providing estimates of aerosol optical thickness, size distribution and phase function at the CART site. However, the accuracy of these retrievals -- particularly of the size distribution and phase function -- has not yet been fully assessed. In this study we compare retrievals of single scattering albedo and phase function resulting from the standard CSPOT inversion algorithms with estimates based on observations from the Whole Sky Imager (WSI). The standard inversion method relies mainly on radiance variation within the aureole region, and assumes the scattering is from spherical particles (i.e., Mie scattering). By using data at larger scattering angles from the WSI, deviations from the spherical scattering approximation become evident. Forward calculations based on the CSPOT aerosol parameters will be modeled with a new Monte Carlo radiance model that provides accurate radiance estimates over the entire upper hemisphere, including the aureole region.

Note: This is the poster abstract presented at the meeting; an extended version was not provided by the author(s).