A world-wide comparison of aerosol data

A comparison of aerosol data acquired at five different sites around the globe is presented. All data has been acquired with the same instrumentation and representative size distributions for marine air masses at 10 m/s wind speed have been selected for comparison. Differences in the concentrations of larger and smaller aerosols at the various sites are explained in terms of fetch, trade winds, shielding, pollution, seawater temperature and phytoplankton bloom. The differences in size distribution induce significant differences in the extinction coefficients from the VIS to the LWIR at the various sites. Consequently, the transmission over a specific range also varies significantly. This suggests that a detailed analysis of the conditions at each site is necessary in order to understand the exact aerosol behavior and to correctly predict electro-optical propagation effects due to aerosols.