Optical Modeling of Sea Salt Aerosols Using in situ Measured Size Distributions and the Impact of Larger Size Particles

Sea salt aerosols play a critical role in regulating the global climate through their interactions with solar radiation. The size distribution of these particles is crucial in determining their bulk optical properties. In this study, we analyzed in situ measured size distributions of sea salt aerosols from four field campaigns and used multi-mode lognormal size distributions to fit the data. We employed super-spheroids and coated super-spheroids to account for the particles’ non-spherictty, inhomogeneity, and hysteresis effect during the deliquescence and crystallization processes. To compute the single-scattering properties of sea salt aerosols, we used the state-of-the-art invariant imbedding T-matrix method, which allows us to obtain accurate optical properties for sea salt aerosols with a maximum volume-equivalent diameter of 12 µm at a wavelength of 532 nm. Our results demonstrated that the particle models developed in this study were successful in replicating both the measured depolarization and lidar ratios at various relative humidity (RH) levels. Importantly, we observed that large-size particles with diameters larger than 4 µm had a substantial impact on the optical properties of sea salt aerosols, which has not been accounted for in previous studies. Specifically, excluding particles with diameters larger than 4 µm led to underestimating the scattering and backscattering coefficients by 27%–38% and 43%–60%, respectively, for the ACE-Asia field campaign. Additionally, the depolarization ratios were underestimated by 0.15 within the 50%–70% RH range. These findings emphasize the necessity of considering large particle sizes for optical modeling of sea salt aerosols.