Modelling optical properties of morphologically complex soot aerosols
Licentiate thesis, 2019
A detailed understanding of the soot particle's optical properties is important to improve the interpretation of remote sensing data as well as the use of lidar remote sensing data in chemical transport modelling. The calculations of the optical properties were carried out using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA). Aim of this thesis is to identify key morphological features, which affect the depolarisation ratio.
As soot particles age in the atmosphere, condensation of other compounds from the gas phase onto the particles results in soot aggregates coated by liquid-phase material. Initially, the soot particles are coated by a thin film (i.e., the coating follows the shape of the aggregate). As more liquid phase material is added, the coating becomes increasingly spherical. It is found that this transition from film coating to radial growth of spherical shells is an important process affecting the linear depolarisation ratio. If this transition occurs first at relatively high amounts of coating, then the depolarisation ratio tends to be high. Conversely, if the coating becomes already spherical at low amounts of coating material, then the depolarisation ratio of the coated soot particles is much lower.
The linear depolarisation ratio of thickly coated aggregates was found to be sensitive to changes in the complex refractive index of the coating material, which represents changes in the chemical composition.
These differences in the optical properties, even after averaging over a particle size distribution, are large enough to clearly distinguish the coating materials.
aerosol
remote sensing
depolarisation
lidar
black carbon
scattering
Author
Franz Kanngiesser
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Microwave and Optical Remote Sensing
Included papers
Calculation of optical properties of light-absorbing carbon with weakly absorbing coating: A model with tunable transition from film-coating to spherical-shell coating
Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer,;Vol. 216(2018)p. 17-36
Journal article
Kanngießer, F., Kahnert, M. Coating material-dependent differences in modelled lidar-measurable quantities for heavily coated soot particles.
Manuscript
Categorizing
Subject Categories
Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Infrastructure
C3SE (Chalmers Centre for Computational Science and Engineering)
Other
Publisher
Chalmers
Public defence
2019-12-11 10:00
EB-salen, Hörsalsvägen 11, Chalmers
Opponent: Adj. Prof. Hannakaisa Lindqvist, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland