Investigation of the vertical profile of the aerosol scattering in the atmosphere by multichannel data from space station MIR

• Published in: Advances in space research Vol. 22; no. 11; pp. 1533 - 1536
• Main Authors: Krezhova, D.D, Zdravev, T.K, Kovatchev, S.T, Mishev, D.N, Nikolov, H.S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 1998
• ISSN: 0273-1177; 1879-1948
• DOI: 10.1016/S0273-1177(99)00025-3

An approach is suggested and applied to determine the atmospheric optical depth parameters from spectral solar irradiance data provided by the multichannel trace spectrometric system “Spectrum 256”. The system “Spectrum 256” has been designed by scientists from the Solar-Terrestrial Influences Laboratory at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and has been operated onboard the MIR space station since 1988. By scanning the atmosphere with the spectrometer pointed directly at the Sun as the MIR station passed from the terminator zone to the sunset zone, the distribution of the atmospheric optical depth components in a vertical column of the Earth's troposphere in the layer between 2 km and 14 km was determined. The molecular (Rayleigh) scattering was modeled and the aerosol scattering model parameters were evaluated. The selective absorption due to gaseous components and water vapor in the 475–810 nm spectral range was determined, taking into account the influence of the optical transmission characteristics of the hatches of the MIR station.