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| An Empirical Method for Estimating Background Stratospheric Aerosol Extinction Profiles over China |
| YANG Jing-Mei |
| Key Laboratory of Middle Atmosphere and Global Environment Observation (LAGEO), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China |
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Abstract The current paper introduces an empirical method for estimating the vertical distribution of background stratospheric aerosol extinction profiles covering the latitude bands of 50±5°N, 40±5°N, 30±5°N, and 20±5°N and the longitude range of 75-135°E based on Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) II aerosol extinction measurements at wavelengths of 1020 nm, 525 nm, 452 nm, and 386 nm for the volcanically calm years between 1998-2004. With this method, the vertical distribution of stratospheric aerosol extinction coefficients can be estimated according to latitude and wavelength. Comparisons of the empirically calculated aerosol extinction profiles and the SAGE II aerosol measurements show that the empirically calculated aerosol extinction coefficients are consistent with SAGE II values, with relative differences within 10% from 2 km above the tropopause to 33 km, and within 22% from 33 km to 35 km. The empirically calculated aerosol stratospheric optical depths (vertically integrated aerosol extinction coefficient) at the four wavelengths are also consistent with the corresponding SAGE II optical depth measurements, with differences within 2.2% in the altitude range from 2 km above the tropopause to 35 km.
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Received: 29 June 2011
Revised: 30 September 2011
Accepted: 25 November 2011
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