R. Mcgraw et al., OPTICAL-PROPERTIES OF ATMOSPHERIC AEROSOLS FROM MOMENTS OF THE PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTION, Geophysical research letters, 22(21), 1995, pp. 2929-2932
The method of moments is a powerful tool for directly calculating the
lower-order moments of an aerosol size distribution without full knowl
edge of the distribution itself. These moments can be tracked in space
and time to represent the effects of nucleation, evaporation and grow
th, coagulation, and complex flowfield dynamics. This letter applies q
uadrature methods for efficient estimation of aerosol optical properti
es directly from a known moment sequence. The approach is demonstrated
using particle size distributions obtained from fits to field measure
ments. Comparison of light-scattering phase functions and other integr
al optical properties calculated from the moments with those obtained
from the full distributions shows that the lower-order moments lead to
an efficient and accurate parametrization for these properties.