AEROSOL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ATMOSPHERE OVER MOSCOW FROM CIMEL SUN PHOTOMETER DATA

N. N. Ulyumdzhieva, N. E. Chubarova, and A. V. Smirnov

Optical properties of the aerosol over Moscow are studied using data from the CIMEL sun photometer installed at the Meteorological Observatory, Moscow State University, in 2001 within the framework of the AERONET program. It is shown that under typical conditions the aerosol optical thickness τλ is small (~0.21) and comparable to τλ in other industrial centers. The single-scattering albedo ω0,673 ~0.85—0.91 is close to the values observed in Mexico City. The automatic cloud-screening and quality control data procedure [11] was verified against visual cloud observations. It is shown that even the monthly mean aerosol optical thickness at level 2.0 (a standard cloud-screening procedure [11]) can be overestimated by 0.02—0.05 due to the presence of high-level clouds. An additional criterion of data screening using visual cloud observations is proposed for data quality improvement.

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