RETRIEVING AEROSOL OPTICAL-PROPERTIES FROM MOMENTS OF THE PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTION

The randomized minimization search technique (RMST) is a powerful tool for retrieving aerosol size distribution from a set of aerosol extinc tion measurements. This technique is now extended to retrieve aerosol optical properties from a known moment sequence. The new usage of the RMST is demonstrated by using particle size distributions obtained fro m fits to in situ measurements conducted in the troposphere and strato sphere. Good agreements (with differences less than 5%) between some a erosol optical properties calculated from the moments and those calcul ated directly from the particle size distributions are obtained. Our r esults illustrate that the RMST can be applied to parameterize particl e optical properties from the lower-order moments of an aerosol size d istribution.