Observation of low single scattering albedo of aerosols in the downwind of the East Asian desert and urban areas during the inflow of dust aerosols

We analyzed data observed at Fukue-jima (32.752 degrees N, 128.682 degrees E), the downwind of the East Asian desert and urban areas, during the spring season (March-April) of 2008-2011 aiming to understand the light-absorption capacity of Asian dust aerosols, which is a topic of controversy. We observed the decreasing tendency of single-scattering albedo (SSA) with the decrease of Angstrom exponent and the increase of the ratio of dust aerosol optical thickness to total aerosol optical thickness, suggesting the important role of coarse-mode dust aerosols on observed low SSAs. The observational data further indicated that the low SSAs during strong dust events were less likely due to the effect of only strong light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols, such as black carbon (BC), indicating the association of aerosol size distribution on modulating SSA. Such observational results are justified by numerical calculations showing that aerosol size distribution can be the key factor on modulating SSA even without any change in relative amount of light-absorbing aerosol as well as total aerosol optical thickness. Therefore, the observed low SSAs in the downwind regions during dust events could be partially due to the dominance of coarse-mode aerosols over fine-mode aerosols, which are usual in dust events, along with the effect of mixed light-absorbing aerosols. The study further suggests that such effect of aerosol size distribution on SSA can be one of the important reasons for the low SSAs of dust aerosols in the source region as reported by some studies, if coarse-mode aerosols dominate fine-mode aerosols.