© Author(s) 2007. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Aerosol single-scattering albedo and asymmetry parameter from MFRSR observations during the ARM Aerosol IOP 2003

• Main Authors: E. I. Kassianov, C. J. Flynn, T. P. Ackerman, J. C. Barnard
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: e.g; Hansen et al; 1997; Zhang et al; 2005). Determination; Aerosol Robotic Network
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.476.6030; http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/29/62/68/PDF/acp-7-3341-2007.pdf

Abstract. Multi-filter Rotating Shadowband Radiometers (MFRSRs) provide routine measurements of the aerosol op-tical depth (τ) at six wavelengths (0.415, 0.5, 0.615, 0.673, 0.870 and 0.94µm). The single-scattering albedo (̟0) is typically estimated from the MFRSR measurements by as-suming the asymmetry parameter (g). In most instances, however, it is not easy to set an appropriate value of g due to its strong temporal and spatial variability. Here, we introduce and validate an updated version of our retrieval technique that allows one to estimate simultaneously ̟0 and g for different types of aerosol. We use the aerosol and radiative properties obtained during the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program’s Aerosol Inten-sive Operational Period (IOP) to validate our retrieval in two ways. First, the MFRSR-retrieved optical properties are compared with those obtained from independent surface, Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET), and aircraft mea-surements. The MFRSR-retrieved optical properties are in reasonable agreement with these independent measurements. Second, we perform radiative closure experiments using the MFRSR-retrieved optical properties. The calculated broad-band values of the direct and diffuse fluxes are comparable (∼5 W/m2) to those obtained from measurements. 1