Aerosol Single-Scattering Albedo in the Arctic, Determined from Ground-Based Nonspectral Solar Irradiance Measurements

Abstract

The single-scattering albedo of atmospheric aerosol is a crucial parameter in realistic radiative transfer calculations. Various attempts have been undertaken to determine this variable. In this article, an empirical and a theoretical radiative transfer model are both used to calculate the aerosol single-scattering albedo from routine nonspectral solar irradiance measurements at ground level, such as those reported from the Arctic station Resolute (74.7°N, 95.0°W) from January 1978 to December 1980. The evaluation of parameters necessary to apply the theoretical approach (two-stream approximation) to realistic atmospheres is detailed. The result shows that the empirical model is inappropriate for this purpose. The two-stream approximation with diffusivity factors of 1.66 yields a final result of 0.80 (±0.18, ?0.19). This result, together with the error bars, is in reasonable agreement with similar studies considering the quality of the input data used.