Maritime Aerosol Optical and Microphysical Properties in the South China Sea Under Multi-source Influence

The South China Sea hosts a wide range of aerosol pollutants with the uneven development of socio-economic and complicated meteorology system. To fill the gap of the maritime aerosol characteristics over the sea, we selected the multi-year ground-based measurements of Taiping Site and Dongsha Site to investigate the optical and microphysical properties. In Taiping, the vast majority of aerosol optical depths (AODs) are less than 0.2, but that of Dongsha shows the wider distribution of AODs from 0 to 0.6. Angstrom Exponent frequency distribution in Taiping peaks at the range of 0.75–1.25 but that has the left-skewed distribution in Taiping Island. Moreover, there is a variation in the coarse-mode volume concentration in Taiping Island but less variation in the fine mode. The seasonal maritime aerosol properties of Taiping and Dongsha have been analyzed that can be employed as a maritime look up table (LUT) kernel in coupled atmospheric retrieval and correction algorithms.