ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF AEROSOL OPTICS TO MOMENTS OF PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTION

Particle size distributions are sometimes conveniently described in te rms of their integral moments. It is known that the details of a size distribution cannot always be recovered from its moments, but it has a lso been shown that an aerosol's optical properties can be insensitive to these details. This paper explores the limits of the correspondenc e between optics and moments, exhibiting size distributions with ident ical moments but dissimilar optical properties, and dissimilar moments but similar optical properties. The examples involve multimodal size distributions of the type observed in continental ambient air.