Atmospheric Transmission Modeling: Proposed Aerosol Methodology with Application to the Grafenwoehr Atmospheric Optics Data Base

Abstract

Using Mie calculations for a wide variety of measured and assumed particle size distributions, a strong relationship between the total volume content of the particulate along the transmission path and the aerosol extinction coefficient was established. Field measurements, such as those taken at Grafenwoehr, Federal Republic of Germany, further established the validity of this relationship. Both theory and experiment suggest that a phenomenological scaling of photopic transmission (related to normal meteorological visibility) to the infrared (IR) windows is possible which furthermore is independent of the structure or shape of the particle size distribution. A second important implication is that a simple, possibly remote measurement of a quantity related to the volume or mass of the aerosol could provide a direct measure of the IR transmission (an IR visibility meter). Such a routine meteorological measurement would clearly be of use to sensor performance modeling. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1976
Accession Number
ADA035765

Entities

People

  • Robert E. Roberts

Organizations

  • Institute for Defense Analyses

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Attenuation
  • Databases
  • Engineering
  • Environment
  • Lidar
  • Long Wavelengths
  • Mie Scattering
  • Night Vision
  • Optical Properties
  • Particle Size
  • Particles
  • Refractive Index
  • Scattering
  • Short Wavelengths
  • Water Vapor

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Aerosol Science/Aerosol Physics
  • European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP).
  • Theoretical Analysis.