Commonalities in measured size distributions for aerosols having a soil-derived component

Abstract

A comparison of several measurements of the size distribution for tropospheric aerosols in which soil‐derived aerosols are significant shows that these aerosol size distributions appear to be characterized by a common mode structure, with the optically important soil particles having radii between 0.5 and 10.0 μm. These measurements suggest that under conditions of low dust loading a reasonable characterization of the size distribution for soil‐derived aerosols is a log normal distribution with a surface mean radius of 1.5 μm and a geometric standard deviation of 2.2.

Influence of dust composition on cloud droplet formation

“…However, we initially equilibrate aerosol at an RH of 97% rather than 100% (Ghan et al, 1998) to account for kinetic limitations near the cloud base (Nenes et al, 2001;Phinney et al, 2003). Coarse dust is represented by a lognormal distribution with σ g = 2.0 and D g = 1.5 or 2.2 µm, which is suitable for long-range transported dust (e.g., Patterson and Gillette, 1977;McTainsh et al, 1997;Singer et al, 2004). A case in which dust is represented by a trimodal distribution is also considered: D g1 = 0.2 µm, D g2 = 0.8 µm, D g3 = 2.0 µm based on Levin et al (2005), σ g1 = σ g2 = σ g3 = 2.0.…”

The Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Desert Aerosols in the HEIFE Region

“…Figure 3 shows an excellent fit of an averaged surface distribution of desert aerosols on clear days in April. The first and third modes usually exist for desert aerosols (Patterson and Gillette, 1977;Jaenicke and Schiitz,1978), with the first mode being mainly secondary particles, and the third mode soil dust. The second mode, however, is probably an instrumental artifact (Finalayson-Pitts and Pitts, 1986;Barrie et al, 1989), induced by the uncertainty of Mie scattering.…”

Effects of Continentally Polluted Air Mass on Aerosol Optical Properties over the East China Sea

“…r mean is the mean density for a mixture of dry aerosols. Densities and refractive indices at the wavelength of 0.55 mm for various dry aerosols were compiled from Patterson and Gillette (1977), Ackerman and Toon (1981), Sloane (1984), D'Almeida et al (1991), Tang (1996), Lowenthal et al (2000), and Takemura et al (2003).…”