Retrieval of 24-Hour Aerosol Optical Depths from Mie Lidar Data at Phimai, Thailand

Abstract

Temporal Aerosol Optical Depths (AODs) of Phimai district, Nakhon Ratchasima province in Thailand were retrieved from measured Mie lidar data on 17-20 February 2005 using Fernald method. The ground-based station was selected for its high and diverse local agricultural activities contributed to the aerosol content which allows for various parameters such as concentration, size distribution and aerosol optical properties to be investigated by Mie theory. The retrieval algorithm of 24-hour AODs was performed in order to monitor regional impact of biomass burning emission on tropospheric aerosols. Results revealed that open biomass burning was a significant contributor to large carbonaceous aerosols in the vicinity of research site with AOD around 0.6-0.7. Furthermore, the prominence of open burning emission yielded short range aerosol transportation when fine and coarse aerosol particles were accumulated with the minimum and maximum average AODs of 0.2187 and 0.4291, respectively. In addition, the observation provided important insights into the physical and scavenging of aerosols under the influence of regional anthropogenic source and would be great knowledge of aerosol data development. By the lidar technique used in present work, the nocturnal AOD retrieval was advantageously available.