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Impact of high aerosol loading on the retrieval of tropospheric NO2 from satellite

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Abstract

Since the rapid economic growth and associated increase in fossil fuel consumption have caused serious particulate pollution in many regions of China, the retrieval of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from satellite needs to pay more attention to the interaction between aerosol and radiation. The accurate determination of NO2 tropospheric vertical columns from satellite measurements depends strongly on the air mass factor (AMF) used. We performed a sensitivity study with the radiative transfer model LIDORT to better understand the impact of high aerosol loading on the calculation of NO2 AMFs, which is ignored in the current algorithm of NO2 satellite retrieval. This influence was studied by changing physical and optical properties of the particles, and varying the aerosol vertical profiles. Scattering properties of typical types of particles were calculated by using the T-matrix method and the GMM method. The results indicate that there were obvious differences in the scattering properties among the spherical particles, non-spherical ones and aggregates. The vertical distributions of trace gas and aerosol varied spatially and temporally, which were simulated by the chemical transport model and constrained by observations. The use of modelled aerosol and NO2 profiles resulted in changes of the AMF values, indicated that detailed information on aerosol properties and vertical distribution is important for the retrieval of tropospheric NO2 columns from space.

© 2015 Optical Society of America

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