Vol. 18, issue 03, article # 9

Abstract:

The role of different factors, influencing the determination of aerosol scattering optical depth from observations of the sky brightness in the near-IR spectral region, is analyzed. For this purpose, we use the measurements of the optical depth and sky brightness at three sites; these sites have an arid aerosol and are presented in AERONET tables. The application of the so-called difference method allowed us to exclude the factor of surface reflection from this solution technique. The effect of variations of solar zenith angle and forward peak of the aerosol scattering phase function on the retrieval of the aerosol optical depth is estimated.