TITLE:
The Effect of Relative Humidity on Maritime Tropical Aerosols
AUTHORS:
Bello Idrith Tijjani, Fatima Sha'aibu, Aliyu Aliyu
KEYWORDS:
Microphysical Properties, Optical Properties, Hygroscopic Growth, Parametrization, Enhancement Parameters, Angstrom Coefficients, Effective Refractive Indices
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.4 No.6,
May
13,
2014
ABSTRACT: The present work focused on the effect of relative humidity (RH) on some microphysical and optical properties of maritime tropical aerosols from the software package OPAC (Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds) data at the spectral range of 0.25 μm to 2.5 μm and eight relative humidities (0%, 50%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95%, 98%, and 99%). The microphysical properties extracted were radii, volume mix ratio, number mix ratio and mass mix ratio as a function of RH while the optical properties were optical depth, extinction, scattering and absorption coefficients single scattering albedo, refractive indices and asymmetric parameters. The hygroscopic growth and enhancement parameters were then parameterized by using some models to determine the hygroscopicity, bulk hygroscopicity, humidification factors and some other parameters that depend on RH and/or wavelengths. The results showed that the data fitted our models very well and can be used to extrapolate the hygroscopic growth at any RH and enhancement parameters at any RH and wavelengths. The importance of determining gfmix(RH) as a function of RH and volume fractions, mass fractions and number fractions, and enhancement parameters as a function of RH. The effective radii increases with the increase in RH, while Angstrom coefficients decrease with the increase in RH and this signifies the dominance of coarse mode particles. The angstrom coefficients show that the mixture has bimodal type of distribution and the mode size increases with the increase in RH.