1. Atmospheric turbidity estimated from visual range with microphysics and active remote sensing data at SKYNET sites
- Author
-
INOUE, Yoko, HIBINO, Mayumi, KUJI, Makoto, and HAYASAKA, Tadahiro
- Abstract
[ABSTRACT]Aerosol has a crucial role in earth radiation budget on a global scale as well as in a source of air pollution on a regional scale. We investigated atmospheric visual range with aerosol particle size and extinction coefficient using in-situ observation and ground-based remote sensing data to estimate the atmospheric turbidity. In this study, we analyzed the data observed at two SKYNET sites, Fukue-jima (32.6°N, 128.8°E) and Amami-oshima (28.2°N, 129.2°E) islands from 2003 to 2004. Both islands are considered as the best sites to observe the aerosol all through the year because they are located at downwind region where we can observe the Asian aerosol with little influence of local pollution. We have several kinds of in-situ observations and remote sensors at both islands, such as Optical Particle Counter (OPC), LIDAR, skyradiometer, and so on. We estimated the extinction coefficient from OPC and LIDAR measurement data to compare it with atmospheric visual range data obtained by eye observation. We made detailed match-up data analyses based on the report of the atmospheric visual range by Japan Meteorological Agency. We obtained the following results: 1) there is a consistent relationship between OPC and LIDAR measurements, related to the atmospheric visual range; 2) a coefficient in the theoretical relationship between extinction coefficient and atmospheric visual range are consistent to the previous studies; 3) the coefficient is more than double when the atmospheric visual range is less than 10 km. These results suggest that aerosol ground-based measurements with atmospheric visual range observation could provide an index of atmospheric turbidity statistically.
- Published
- 2009