The Effect of Varying Aerosol Concentrations on Visibility and Particle Size Distribution in Urban Atmosphere: Validating OPAC Results using MERRA Satellite Aerosol Data

Abstract

Well validated simulation software and models are meant to add value through a more precise representation of different atmospheric features and climate characteristics that are physically out of reach. In this work, comparison and validation was carried out using the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) averaged Angstrom Exponents (α) and averaged visibilities for ten urban countries against simulated Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds (OPAC) urban components. The simulations of OPAC were performed at 0%, 50%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95%, 98% and 99% relative humidities (RH) while the MERRA satellite data were extracted at an average of 78% relative humidity. results based on α values showed that OPAC was only able to simulate well the insoluble and soot aerosol particle size distributions of India’s urban atmosphere such that it had approximately the same insoluble and soot aerosol particle size distributions as India. For the rest of the nine countries (USA, Brazil, Indonesia, China, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Ethiopia), OPAC was seen to either overestimate or underestimate water soluble, insoluble and soot aerosol particle size distributions. For visibility and water soluble or insoluble aerosol concentrations, OPAC showed good simulated values that were approximately the same as those found within Ethiopia’s and Japan’s urban atmosphere. OPAC also had visibility value and insoluble aerosol concentration that were approximately the same as those found within China’s atmosphere. For all other countries (India, USA, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan) OPAC either overestimated their visibilities and underestimated their water soluble, insoluble and soot aerosol concentrations or vice versa. With both OPAC and MERRA, the presence of fine mode aerosol particles in an urban atmosphere was established with α values > 1. But MERRA also showed otherwise for three countries (Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan) that had α values < 1 which implied the presence of coarse mode aerosol particles. The relationship between visibility and α satisfied the direct power law for OPAC, for MERRA the relationship approximately satisfied the power law for most of the countries.