Technical note: Evaluation of profile retrievals of aerosols and trace gases for MAX-DOAS measurements under different aerosol scenarios based on radiative transfer simulations

作者：Xin Tian, Yang Wang, Steffen Beirle, Pinhua Xie, Thomas Wagner, Jin Xu, Ang Li, Steffen Dörner, Bo Ren, Xiaomei Li · 发表于：Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.5194/acp-21-12867-2021 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics、Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols、Atmospheric Ozone and Climate

Abstract. Ground-based Multi-AXis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) is a state-of-the-art remote sensing technique for deriving vertical profiles of trace gases and aerosols. However, MAX-DOAS profile inversions under aerosol pollution scenarios are challenging because of the complex radiative transfer and limited information content of the measurements. In this study, the performances of two inversion algorithms were evaluated for various aerosol pollution scenarios based on synthetic slant column densities (SCDs) derived from radiative transfer simulations. Compared to previous studies, in our study, much larger ranges of aerosol optical depth (AOD) and NO2 vertical column densities (VCDs) are covered. One inversion algorithm is based on optimal estimation; the other uses a parameterized approach. In this analysis, three types of profile shapes for aerosols and NO2 were considered: exponential, Boltzmann, and Gaussian. First, the systematic deviations of the retrieved aerosol profiles from the input profiles were investigated. For most cases, the AODs of the retrieved profiles were found to be systematically lower than the input values, and the deviations increased with increasing AOD. In particular for the optimal estimation algorithm and for high AOD, these findings are consistent with the results in previous studies. The assumed single scattering albedo (SSA) and asymmetry parameter (AP) have a systematic influence on the aerosol retrieval. However,...